The Anagram of Suzumiya Kurumi
by kurushi
Summary: The trauma that I am talking about is that of my energetic, paranoid, manic, unstoppable mother, who taught me almost from the day of my birth about time travellers, ESPers, aliens, magicians, yakuza, vengeful gods, and sliders.
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer for all chapters: __ All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. _

_Many thanks to Yasuhei, who has looked over these early chapters for me._

_

* * *

_

Ah, how to begin? It's hard to know, when you travel through time as much as I have. Not only is life far more recursive and confusing even than you would expect, but the nature of stories change. The perspectives on time and causality and interrelationships of events - interdependence, perhaps – mean that it's a little hard to relate to the books and stories that people with linear lifestyles enjoy. It feels even harder to start trying to think of one yourself.

The best place to begin this story is in my childhood. Before I was recruited by the agency, because some of the trauma that made me who I am today began very early in my life. From the exact moment I was born, in fact. The trauma that I am talking about is that of my energetic, paranoid, manic, unstoppable mother.

I grew up to the age of preschool attendance in world that seemed impossibly scary. Terrifying and alienating! As I learned to talk, I didn't develop a vocabulary of the normal words kids did. I didn't know what a bunny was until I was babysat by one of mother's friends, and that was when I was four! No, my mother taught me almost from the day of my birth about time travellers, ESPers, aliens, magicians, yakuza, vengeful gods, and sliders.

"You have to remember, Kurumi-chan! Make sure you never forget this! If you create a time paradox you might end up never being born, or being born as a boy, or even as a mutant with arms coming out of your face! Uwaa, it's a world of limitless possibilities!"

"Uweeeeeeh?"

Needless to say, I lived in terror of the world at large. I was scared of shadows on the street, in case they were pockets of alternate realities that threatened to swallow me hole and steal me away. I jumped at the sound of helicopters and airplanes, certain that they were UFOs coming down to assasinate us all, or turn us into monkey hair covered slaves, or to probe us anally. But it wasn't until my first day of preschool that I felt true hopelessness and despair.

I had only been there for two hours; I was sobbing so hard that they had to call my mother in to pick me up. She might have lost her new job over that, but she never had one complaint about that. She just gave me a big thumbs up, and had a brave wide smile on her face.

"Good vibes level up time, Kurumi-chan!"

I sniffled and wrapped my arms around her legs. The denim was warm from the morning sun. She disentangled me and hefted me up into her arms. The gentleness in her voice was unusual and surprising.

"There, there. I won't force the issue. I can tell something really awful happened. But if you feel up to talking, I'd like to know. Then I will know who to beat up for you!"

The sweet unexpected softness of her voice, combined with that last sentence, sent tears cascading over my cheeks again. Snot ran down into my mouth, and I cried it out until I was a shivering, whining mess in her arms. My head felt hot like a fever. I felt a little distant from the world.

I realised that I was being carried home slowly. For the first time in my life, my mother seemed ready and willing to listen to anything that I had to say. Hiccuping and being jolted a little as she carried me up the stairs of an overpass, I confessed.

"I had a fight with a boy. H-he said that he'd get his Dad to beat me up, and I... I..."

I just couldn't say it. I huddled closer to my mother's chest, and hid my face from the world. I must have spread my goopy slime all over her, but she didn't seem to mind at all. She didn't reply at all for a while, and the sound of her feet slowly making their way down the stairs once we had crossed the road was my entire universe. Nothing else existed, but my desperate pain and a mother's warmth that surrounded everything. I wanted to pull her around me like a blanket, fall asleep, and never have to wake up and meet rude boys who had fathers ever again.

"Kyon, you idiot." Were the words that finally reached my ears. At that young age, innocent of knowledge and true awareness, they meant nothing to me. Then she said other things, that made more sense. "You know? I knew I'd miss your dad. But I never thought that it would hit you as hard as it did me."

I sniffed and nodded against her. "Me too."

She hefted me onto her shoulder as we reached the entrance to our apartment block. In went the keycode, and then in we went. The elevator doors closed behind us as we headed closer to our home.

"I know it's hard, not having a father. But trust me. Anything comes your way, and Suzumiya Haruhi will punch them right out! Buchaaa! Like that, see? And if that doesn't work? Well, I'll just have to steal some of their hair or fingernails. Then when we meet exciting aliens, we can have them home in on the DNA and get real creeeeeeepy revenge!"

I shuddered at the thought of aliens capable of such cruel acts, but something in her words made me feel safe and secure. Though I felt lost and alone and only half of a person – all because I had realised that "Your Dad's not here anymore" really _did_ affect my life and identity – I fell asleep quickly and woke up feeling brighter than I ever had before. I even drew some pictures of giant space octopi to give to my mother. The smile she beamed down at me was the happiest thing I had ever seen. It was a smile wider than my entire head (I was really small back then), and it was amazing.

The next day, of course, she made me a Roswell autopsy themed lunchbox and abandoned me at the preschool from 8am until 7pm. But that was a normal aspect of the life that was to come for me; what is more important in my mind is that moment of speechlessness shared together. Without words, we both felt the same heartache at the exact same time. I would like to believe that wherever my father was, the strength of our love found some way to reach him.


	2. Chapter 2

**2015, Suzumiya Residence, Tokyo**

The proudest day of my mother's life was the day that my future superior from the agency knocked on our door. I wasn't allowed to be in the room with them while they discussed anything, so I had settled down in the living room with the photo albums. They held the only pictures left of my father. All from my mother's – and his I suppose – high school days. They had led such a happy, busy life together. In just the few years that we had photos of, there had been the usual high school and club activities, school festivals and holidays. But there had also been so much more! Name any sport, any art, any activity whatsoever, and they seemed to have done it. Rock music? Check! Treasure hunting? Check! Short film? Check! Street protesting, part-time working, baseball tournament, flash mobbing, bus hijacking? One big, exuberant and obnoxious check for all of them!

It had never been very surprising. By the time I was old enough to really understand what I was seeing, I'd been old enough to know my mother well. It was more surprising that they'd _only_ filled four albums during high school, two to each year. And then? Nothing. In a folder somewhere was my mother's graduation photographs. In a box were collections of pictures of my early childhood, mostly taken by my Aunt Yuki, mostly of myself and my Uncle Itsuki. I'd lived those moments, and I didn't need to revisit them.

No, what intrigued me was seeing my father. Happy at times, stressed at others. In his pained expressions and tortured sighs, always posed close beside my mother, I saw a kindred spirit. I could only imagine what my life might have been like, if he'd been beside me. If he'd been there to stand up to my mother and to protect me from her will. That ache from my early childhood had held strong in my heart all those years. A longing, a void, an emptiness in my life where there should have been someone strong and encouraging and sympathetic.

For all that Aunt Yuki was serious and sane, compared to my mother, she was passive and never really protected me. For all that Uncle Itsuki smiled and held me with warmth, showered me with affection, he was more devoted to my mother. My father looked, with my mother's arm in a choke-hold around his neck, like someone who would have been unreliable and flaky and terrified of my mother. But someone who would have stood up against her for my sake anyway.

As for the strange girl in many of the photographs, I had no idea of her identity. She was even more distant than my father. As the voice of my mother rose and fell with her usual mania behind the door to the kitchen, I let myself fall into contemplation of the hated girl's face. With no other evidence than these photographs, I had discovered the true nature of my father's absence. He wasn't dead or missing, simply seduced away by this other girl. You could see it in the pictures. He held her hand in some, and they shared secret happy smiles with each other. She looked gentle and kind and safe and connected to him. She seemed to be all the sweetness and gentleness that a man could desire in a wife.

It wasn't a stretch for me to imagine my mother, pregnant and angry and snapping, as my father cowered in the arms of a nicer person. To imagine mother driving him away. It would explain why my Aunt and Uncle were so evasive whenever I asked them about her and why she wasn't around anymore. Why my father was gone. Why all the photographs between their high school club and my early childhood were missing.

I suspect that part of my heart knew even at that young age that my daydreams and fantasies were merely that. Imaginary fumblings in the absence of any real knowledge. But I needed a reason. There had to be a reason why he'd left. There had to be a reason why nobody mentioned that girl. There had to be an explanation! Even though my mother bought all that science fiction bullcrap, I was old enough to know better. My fingers tightened around the edges of the album, and I gritted my teeth as I stared straight into the eyes of the unknown girl. None of the excuses were enough. Not UFOs, not even my own ideas about infidelity and abandonment. There _had_ to be a reason. That mother was so vague, that my Aunt and Uncle were so evasive... well, it only confirmed my suspicions. Somehow, I was going to get to the bottom of it all.

But my burning desire to find out the truth was crushed the moment that the kitchen door opened. The older woman, with her hair tight and wrapped up in a floral scarf, shook hands with my mother and knelt down beside me. I closed the photo album and turned to her. Those eyes... I'll never forget, they were the same as those of the girl in the photograph.

It was hard, but I held back. I wanted to scream, to fly at her with fingernails and kicking feet. I wanted to demand my father back, at once. But the woman's smile had something kind and genuine in it, and my mother's shrill voice was breaking through the fury that burnt behind my eyes. When her words finally registered, I felt too blank and empty with shock to do anything.

"So this is Kurumi, Miss Miracle..? Milk?"

"Miruku." The woman said, smiling.

It was a stupid name. I said so. My mother clapped me on the shoulder, and I jumped in shock.

"You see? I told you, Kurumi's just like her mother! Ostentatious, brave, piggishly proud, stubborn, and obnoxious! She's just the sort of mind that you're looking for, though you already know _that_." Oh she always had to say things like that, and as if they were _good _things. I felt a little sick inside, when I thought about growing up to turn out like her.

"Indeed." The woman nodded at me, and she gave me the look that many adults do, when they have to deal with my mother. Sympathetic and exasperated. I shrugged. It wasn't as if sympathy was going to change the situation at all.

"Well in any case, talk it over with Kurumi, and I'll have the paperwork sent to you. Once everything's been filed and sorted, I'll be dropping by again."

"Great. Isn't that great, Kurumi?"

I wasn't sure how to answer. I didn't want to commit to anything that I didn't know anything about. I still had the confidence of youth in me, and I wrapped my arms across my chest and regarded them both silently.

"Well, I'd better be getting on then." Miruku cleared her throat and nodded towards the front door. My mother showed her out, all smiles, and then ignored my confused looks and headed straight for the telephone.

I knew something big was up, then. You could see it, if you knew the signs well enough. The force with which she pressed the speed-dial for Uncle Itsuki's house. The way you could see past her teeth and right down her throat when she insisted that Aunt Yuki come around for dinner. As soon as she'd hung up, and begun to shuffle through the pile of takeout menus, I slammed my hand down on top of them.

I was ready to demand an explanation, but seeing the madness in my mother's eyes scared me into silence. She'd spent six years as a paranormal investigator. Three of them as a prime-time TV hit. She'd spent most of my life, now, running around disproving UFO sightings and Vampiric disturbances in Tokyo. I'd thought that being exposed to all that logic and reason would have calmed her insanity. But... it hadn't. She still got that rabid glint in her eyes, and you knew that it was time for another road trip. Another huge and exciting experiment. Whatever she had really been discussing with Miss Miruku, I suspected I would never really find out. She'd have already twisted it in her mind into something supernatural and spectacular.

"You know, um... I think I'll go wash up. Before the guests arrive." Even at that young age, I was learning the evasion tactics that I would rely upon for the rest of my life.

"Oh! Put on something good! Oh, I know... the Gallifreyan costume I had Yuki make for you last year! It's so appropriate, and you look so _cute_ dressed up like a Time Lord. And given what's happened today, it's a perfect match for your big news!"

My legs shook a little. I didn't want to know what my "big news" was supposed to be. But if all she was going to inflict on me was another costume, it wasn't that bad. There were no cameras, no soil samples or strange scavenger hunt lists. I could live with a slightly odd suit.

Cleaned and dressed, I picked my way downstairs gingerly and waited as unobtrusively as I could near the front door. She'd put on the stereo, and was humming brightly along to the music, pulling out her favourite and oddest cutlery, crockery, and napkins. Some of them were cheap plastic novelty aliens, others just raku-inspired but cheap pottery with splotches of glaze that my mother _swore_ were secret signals from another dimension. Strange and unimaginable beings trying to communicate.

Aunt Yuki arrived first. When she saw my costume, her lips twitched. She didn't smile very often, but sometimes you did catch the odd hint of an emotional reaction. As I stared at her, she blinked, and then looked up at the sky for a moment. Then she faced me and actually did smile. It was small, but it was there.

"So tonight is a big night, then? I should have known something was happening."

I missed the hint in her words, and waved her in to our hallway. It was an easy mistake to make. Mum had been way too calm for way too long, and I assumed that Yuki had meant that something was happening with _her._

"Has she always been like this? I mean... the whole... taking something entirely normal and obvious and talking it up in her head until she's ranting about how the Greek Gods run a secret cabal within the video game arcade?"

Aunt Yuki gazed at me, her face once more blank. "It is hard to tell." She said finally and thoughtfully.

I tried to explain more, better. "You know, like with her show? How she makes up all that stuff, then believes in it, then runs around and proves that it's made up, and then starts all over again! I just... don't get it. I don't know how you can work with her."

"And I don't know how you can live with her, my dear little munchkin."

Uncle Itsuki stepped into the hall as well, brushing something off of his shoulders. I waited while they left their shoes in the entryway, and then we all filed through into the living room. In the few minutes I'd been away, Mum had managed to fling streamers of brightly coloured paper throughout the room. There was a bowl of sweets, a teapot, and four cups on the coffee table.

"Oh no, no Mum! You didn't!" I'd become very good at making tea, entirely out of self preservation. I have no idea what she'd done before my arms were long enough to lift the kettle, but I was sure it couldn't have been good. Her tea, it probably would rank as a bioweapon. She was more likely to discover a strange explosion or supernatural experience at the bottom of her cup, than out on one of her field trips.

She laughed and tossed her head, her hair fluttering dramatically around her face. "I can't let you do _all_ the tea-related chores, sweetie! Not on this, your biggest and most wonderful day! It's more wonderful than when I sent that message to the aliens! More exciting than when I finally got the TV show, and the funding for my vital research! More important than when we finally bought our house, even!"

Oh dear. I didn't like this at all. She was grandstanding, and getting all excited. Uncle Itsuki was laughing quietly behind a hand, and Aunt Yuki was kneeling down at the coffee table, beginning to pour tea out for us. I was torn between accusing Uncle Itsuki of conspiring with Mum against me, thanking Aunt Yuki for minimising the harm done to those poor tea leaves by my terror of a mother, and hiding alone in my bedroom out of fear for whatever was about to be revealed.

With a deep breath, my mother waved a hand to encompass the entire room in her thrall. Then, as if it was a royal decree, she projected her voice loudly.

"Tonight... we are going to have pizza and then cake. So mote it be!"

"So mote it be." Aunt Yuki recited automatically. I winced, and accepted a cup from her. I pretended to sip from it, and held my breath.

Somehow, Uncle Itsuki managed to get a whole cupful down. He smiled broadly, and gestured for Yuki to pour another cup. "And congratulations, Kurumi. You must be very excited, and we're all proud of you."

I blinked. That was odd. Nobody had explained anything. How on earth did he already know? Ah, I supposed that Mum had explained it all on the phone earlier. "Well what is it, then?"

I couldn't help sounding snappish and grumpy. But I had every right to be. Everyone seemed to be celebrating a huge secret, taunting me with it. I knew nothing good would ever come of it. The smile that Aunt Yuki had flashed me... she always seemed to have an uncanny sense for things that were going to be... well... awful. She always showed up just in time to deal with my mother's worst schemes.

Nobody had answered. My mother's lips quivered with barely contained glee. She seemed about to burst with joy and exuberance.

"WHAT IS IT?" I stood, slamming my hands down and spilling tea from my cup. "What on earth is going on?"

"And she's so eager! Darling, you're only nine years old, there's no hurry. You won't be picked up till tomorrow morning, so let's just enjoy this final night together."

Final night? Wait, that sounded pretty bad. "Huh? Final night? Could somebody please explain? I mean it, I'm confused!"

It was Uncle Itsuki who answered me finally. He rubbed a warm hand over the top of my head and in a far too sweet voice said, "Ah we're one step ahead of you. You're so brilliant, and you don't even know it. My dear little friend, you've been accepted into the agency."

"The Agency?"

Aunt Yuki shook her head and answered in a monotone. "No, it's the agency. No capitalisation, I believe. Don't ask me why, I imagine it will be explained when the time is right."

"Okay, the agency. But... what is it? Mum?"

It wasn't until we'd ordered dinner and had sat around for an hour that I finally gathered all the information that I needed. What with Aunt Yuki's usual blankness, Uncle Itsuki's secret smile, and Mum's insane enthusiasm, figuring it all out was like pulling teeth. But we did get there in the end.

"So... a complete stranger..."

Uncle Itsuki snickered, and Aunt Yuki glared at him. I frowned and started again.

"So a complete stranger shows up, and tells you that I've qualified somehow without having taken _any_ exams, to be inducted into a secret time travelling school run by an unnamed and uncapitalised agency. And I leave tomorrow. And you're not at all scared about my being abducted or killed."

Mum sighed, and brushed a tear from her eye. "Isn't it wonderful? All these years, I've been thirsting after truly exciting experiences... I've been chasing suspicious circumstances... and all along, the most suspicious thing of all was my own daughter!"

From anyone else, that might have been a joke. But no, that was my mother. She was all genuine pride and astonished joy. Tears of happiness. I grit my teeth. I didn't like it at all. Either this was a dirty trick, a joke on me. Or some twisted kidnapping attempt. Maybe revenge from one of the victims of my mother's investigations?

But the thought that scared me the most was the one I didn't dare acknowledge until we'd said goodnight to my Aunt and Uncle and sent them to their respective homes. Until I'd shared a bone-crushingly tight hug with Mum and gone upstairs to my bedroom.

The light was off, the only illumination from the streetlights and the occasional passing car. I could hear Mum bumping around in the kitchen downstairs, cleaning up after our mess. I could hear a sniffle, that sounded just like my own, but slightly higher. Across the room. I focused in the dim light and saw the silhouette of a shadow against the darkness near my wardrobe. About my height, about my age.

"Are you...no, that's impossible, I..."

"Uweeeeeh!"

I couldn't mistake the cry of sheer terror. _My_ cry of terror, that had echoed out throughout my life. With every ghost story and murder mystery. With every shout from my mother. But I hadn't made a sound.

The shadow fumbled with something, and then moved forwards towards me. It was me, wearing my school uniform and looking shell-shocked and traumatised. I looked... smaller. Fragile. Nothing at all like what I felt inside. I was so upset about how weak I looked that it took a moment to sink in. The truth.

"Oh god. It's true, it's all true." I shared a horrified look with my future self. I'd very obviously become a real time traveller. That was the only conclusion I could reach, seeing myself like this. The device she was fumbling with, that must have something to do with the whole process.

And if time travel was possible, what was to say that other things weren't? What if my scepticism had been misplaced? What if everything was real, really real, and... and...

My mind reeled. ESPers could be real. Aliens. Monsters and conspiracies and alternate realities. I thought about the stories I'd heard from Mum for my entire life; Lovecraftian demons and wizards and necromancers. Giant wars in space, huge threats to life and safety. Of course they couldn't _all_ be real. Not all at once. But I'd had my eyes forced open, abruptly open, to the possibility.

I was shivering uncontrollably. My future self winced in sympathy, and poked at her device for a few seconds. She shrugged, and looked at me helplessly.

"I'm so, so sorry." Her voice sounded as weak and breakable and scared as I felt. I bit my lip and burrowed down under the blankets. Without a sound or any lights at all, she was gone.

If terrible things like this were real, then maybe there really was a horrible secret behind the disappearance of my father and that girl. Something so bad that there weren't any photographs left.

Even though it was summer, I felt cold in my bed. Alert and alone and adrift. I was sure I was feeling the hugeness, the void of space. The vast blackness and fear that existence really was. I had no hope, none at all, of ever getting to sleep. But I also didn't want to spend all night remembering all of the stories that had fed my nightmares and paranoia. I didn't want to recall the hideous terror of my mother's scary face, as she recounted exactly how parasite psychic bugs could grow inside human organs. No, I had to stop thinking!

But I couldn't. I was too full of adrenaline and energy. So I did something else. I thought about what my life was to become. Ignoring the shock of discovering a world full of paranormal activity – or at least with the possibility of it – I focused on myself. It wasn't that I _wanted_ to become a time traveller. It seemed like the sort of career that messed up university entrance options. A vocation that Mum would seize upon as justification for dragging me into her mad world of investigative tabloid journalism.

So why? Why time travel? I would obviously become one, because there I had been, not looking much older at all, and then suddenly there I wasn't. So I'd come back, and gone forwards. Back to whenever that me had come from.

Oh, it made me dizzy. There had to be a reason that I had agreed to go, right? Even now, the thought of just agreeing to it all felt a little wrong. Why me? Why not someone eager, like my mother, or someone capable like Aunt Yuki? I'd seen myself quite clearly, and I came across as a weak scared little girl. Even just someone with a stable home life would have been a better choice for a time travelling operative. Someone with a father, at the very least, if not a whole pair of sane parents.

Wait. Hah! I had it. I had figured out why and how I'd become a time traveller. I was sure there would be rules against it, of course. And systems in place to prevent time paradoxes. But if I gained control of a time travel device, I might one day be able to travel back under my own direction. I'd be able to meet my father. The man who I had felt the lack of for my entire life. I just... I felt unexpected warmth at the thought of it. It was like all the cold dark scary thoughts that my mother inspired had melted away. The power of a father's protection and love.

And then the next thought, such an obvious continuation from my last, hit me. I gasped in hopeful astonishment into the darkness of my bedroom.

If I could go back and _see_ him, maybe I could go back and _talk_ to him. Warn him about whatever dangers were coming his way. No, even better! I could snoop around, find out all about the problems that had separated us forever, and then give him detailed instructions on how to avoid any trouble.

I could keep him near us. And if Mum scared him away with her craziness? Well I could try and talk him into taking me away with him. I had no idea how hard it would be, but I had hope. It was something I'd never really felt before. It was a stupid idea, and one that I'd pay for for years, but looking back I can say that the day I was accepted into the agency... was the day that I made my mother proud. She was consciously proud that I'd lived up to all her dreams of supernatural adventures, but there was even more to it than that. I was starting to display my inherited predisposition towards stubbornness, ignorance, and insanely wishful thinking.

Of course, all I could see then was the promise in my father's tortured smile. In his photograph, as I eagerly packed my bags.


	3. Chapter 3

**2003, Asahina Residence, Tokyo**

I could mention the various days of my training; the strange glitches and hints that should have made me more suspicious than they did. The clues that I should have noticed. But it's so obvious, and so embarrassing that I didn't pick up on it earlier, that I'd rather skip straight to the day that everything became clear to me.

It was my first big, real mission. All of my trips through time so far had been incredibly dull. Forwards and backwards as an "exchange student" in various classrooms. Aside from training in time travel protocol and device usage, I'd only received what would amount to a basic school experience. The only difference was that there were no parents in the apartments that I inhabited; no terrifying mother figure to half-poison me with her innovative cooking or strongarm me into her latest Loch Ness Monster Detection scheme.

So, in other words, I lived in bliss. I had nice food, and nice tea. I had some friends in each school I visited. I had weekend courses with Miss Miruku Mizuyasu, I had peace. Aside from the events I should have been wise to, life was quiet. I wasn't expecting much more from my first mission, though I knew it would be a step beyond what I'd ever done before. When I emerged at the co-ordinates and began to read through my mission background documents in my new apartment, I felt the slow beginnings of realisation curdling in my stomach. The documents themselves had come in a hardcopy dump; although my wetware was capable of fast data exchange, hardcopy was still more resilient throughout time and space.

First, there was the basic outline of the Ideal Timeline. The most stable succession of events that would be my goal to uphold and actualise. It involved mainly a list of natural disasters, political events, and early warning signs. There was a sealed section, though. Marked with red tape, highly dangerous. I'd never been involved with a dangerous section of time before. It sent a shiver down my back, as my mother's words echoed in my mind.

No, Mum. No time paradoxes here, I promise! Oh please let that be true! I'd have prayed to a god, if I believed in one, but instead I sent my heartfelt hopes forwards in time to my mother. I hoped that I would not make her proud. That I would have the most mundane and boring mission possible. That I would not jeopardise time _or_ space, let alone both of them at once.

I set the sealed section aside. I could brush up on the things to be wary of another day. I could keep myself up-to-date with the threats daily if I needed to; there was no rush. I wouldn't be active for a week, while I settled into my cover persona. Instead I turned to the dossiers of my mission target and other persons of interest.

My mission objective was to observe a central Person of Interest to the time-plane. No action, no direct interaction. Just observation and regular reports, checking their events against the Ideal Timeline. Requesting backup when things began to destabilise. Though the sealed documents made it seem like a slightly more volatile task than I had expected...

I slid open the envelope and pulled out the information on my target. He was a high school student, and I was to be stationed a year above him, so that I could observe his activities from a distance unnoticed. But as I withdrew his photograph from the file, my heart stopped. It stuttered. I held my breath, as tears welled into my eyes.

I'd been planning, bit by minute bit, to find a way to insinuate myself into their timeline. I'd been so preoccupied with the setup for my mission, however, that I hadn't checked the dates or location well enough before I'd arrived. This was... I was living in his suburb. I was enrolled in his school. My father! My job was to do what I'd wanted to do for my entire lifetime: to finally discover what sort of a person he had been. To see him in all of his best and worst days, to know his voice and his body language. Sure, I wouldn't be able to reveal my identity to him. And I wouldn't be able to even talk to him, contact was right out. But I'd be close to him. Breathing the same air as him. I wasn't exactly close to finding out how or why he disappeared, but it was one step. I might see something that contributed to everything later on. It wasn't too big an assumption to make; the slightest changes to a conversation or experience can have very exaggerated effects later in a person's life.

Maybe I'd even discover the identity of the mystery girl from the photographs. All of these years, and I still had no idea who she was. Long hair, gentle terrified smile, oddly fetishistic clothing...

I sorted through the dossiers of the other persons of interest. If my father was my central target, then obviously the dossiers would cover his closest acquaintances. The thick file on my mother was unsurprising, and I shoved it quickly aside to see what else there was.

Not much. Uncle Itsuki, with some very strange comments about... supernatural events. Though I'd been briefed to expect very strange situations at times, this sudden revelation about my Uncle, of all people, was startling. There wasn't much to his dossier. Name, date of birth, home address, and one sentence in the additional notes: _May be an ESPer, appears to be attached to their organisation. Exercise caution and avoid all contact if possible._

Alarmed, I read through the rest of the page. It was all just basic info, and a lot of it I already knew. His home life, his personal history. A little unsure as to whether I wanted to read any of the other dossiers, I fetched myself a glass of water and tried to calm my frantic heart before I pushed onwards. It couldn't be possible, could it? That Mum had spent the last decade or so of her life chasing down supernatural events – and failing to find them, every time – with an ESPer at her side?

It sounded like a bad joke. I couldn't wash the bitter taste of it from my mouth. His smiles, his laughter... what had seemed like highly insightful and gentle amusement from the only male role-model in my life... it had become tainted. Uncle Itsuki had known, most probably, at least some of what I was thinking. How did ESP work, anyway? There were gaps in my training that I had to fill as soon as possible. Before I enrolled in the school, even! No way could I risk betraying classified information and, and...

Maybe this was it. Maybe my mission here was to become compromised by exposure through Uncle Itsuki, and that upset time enough to destabilise everything, throwing my father into some convoluted and poorly explained vortex!

No, that was just stupid. I was just channelling my mother again, going off on all kinds of stupid tangents of thought. I slapped myself on the hand, and said "Bad me. No more thinking like that madwoman!" aloud in the empty apartment.

I had to find out about ESP, but first I should work through the rest of the dossiers, and make a list of anything else that I should look up. I was going to have a very long night ahead of myself.

The next dossier was of Nagato Yuki. Aunt Yuki, who rarely smiled and who would have seemed too rational to be a supernatural enthusiast, if she didn't always carry the latest Sci-Fi short fiction anthology around in her pocket. And what I saw there made my blood run cold in my veins. This woman had held me as an infant. Had babysat me more times than Mum had ranted about drop-bears!

_Synthetic human body, suspected to be a biological interface for transmissions from an extra-terrestrial being. Appears to be capable of atemporal synchronicity, extreme caution advised._

I stared at that. Just stared at the page. Did that mean what I thought it meant? Yes, yes it must. So, ahah, Uncle Itsuki was an ESPer who might be conspiring against me. Aunt Yuki was... atemporally synchronous. That meant, I supposed, that she could reconcile her knowledge or consciousness with that of her future self.

Which, if she was representing alien interests, also a threat. With less than two A4 pages of paper and only a few hundred words, I had been robbed of the stability and warmth of what I had thought to be my family. We hadn't been blood related, but I had felt a love for and connection with these people, these strangers...

I cried, getting splotchy tearstains all over my files. I didn't care. This was my _first_ mission. This was supposed to be the easy one! Just sit tight, and make observations. Objective observations. Of my father, and the people that had helped to raise me.

The sobs choked out of my throat, bubbled up. A long time later when I had exhausted myself my throat felt bruised from it all, my face hot, my eyes and sinuses wrung dry and stinging. I did the only thing I could think to do. I boiled the kettle, and made myself a pot of tea. I didn't make it well at all. The water wasn't quite hot enough. I used too much tea, and then forgot and let it steep too long. It came out bitter and wrong and left a sour aftertaste in my mouth.

It was just like my mother's tea, brewed haphazardly while she rushed about doing a hundred thousand other things at once. It comforted me and made me homesick at the same time, and I scowled down at my cup. Who on earth would have ever known that hideous taste would be comforting?

Feeling drained, I sighed and shuffled through the rest of the paperwork. I wasn't going to be up to any research tonight, but at least I knew to keep secluded until I was prepared. I would need a lot of emotional strength to survive the few years of my assignment. I scanned across the names of various schoolmates, a very young girl who must be my biological aunt (my father's little sister), and some adults I did not recognise at all. But nowhere in the pile was the girl that I'd initially expected to see. I sifted back through them, keeping Mum and my father and Nagato and Koizumi separate. Nothing. No bright brownish hair shining long and soft like in the photographs. No soft smile. There was nothing of her there.

Baffled and more than a little shell-shocked, I gave up on it all and decided to try to get some sleep. The first night in any new time-plane was pretty rough and disorienting, but I desperately needed rest. I went to the bathroom to deal with the necessaries and wash my tear soaked face clean. It wasn't until I'd lifted my head from the sink and was about to reach for the towel to dry myself off that I saw it. The resemblance, right there in front of me. That same stressed and frantic gaze, forced into a calm and stoic half-smile. That hair, that frame.

Why hadn't I noticed before? I hadn't been home in a while, but the memory of those photographs was hardwired into my brain, I'd gazed longingly at them so often! It couldn't possibly be! But there I was, Suzumiya Kurumi, code-name Asahina Mikuru, red-eyed and terrified at the sight of my own reflection.

It was a chilling realisation. It meant that something was going to go wrong very soon. That my mission was going to change – and probably for the worse – before the end of the year. Not only that, but I was somehow going to be forced into close proximity with Nagato and Koizumi. If they didn't already know about my arrival... I wouldn't put it past Aunt Yuki to inform herself of something like that, or past Uncle Itsuki to pry into Yuki's mind... then they'd find out soon enough. How was I to protect my classified information? Had I been sent here for this reason alone, to jeopardise my own mission?

I couldn't bear to think of it. They must have known. There were photographs, and anecdotes of my involvement with their club. Miss Mizuyasu must have known, before she assigned my task to me. Why had they misled me? Why hadn't they warned me? I felt confused and betrayed and very hard done by. Unprepared. My new bed and new sheets and new clothes were all a little too crisp and clean against my skin. I hadn't been allowed to bring anything from home with me. Not a single photograph. Everything was strange, and though I'd grown used to the routine of it over the years of my schooling, it felt as wrong and awkward and confronting as the first night I'd spent away from my Mum.

But worse. Much worse. All of the unexpected isolation and depression, and none of the promise or hope. These things? This bed beneath me, all new and smelling like the plastic it had come wrapped up in? It would be rotting cold wet muck by the time I was born. These sheets would be decomposing and soiled in a tip, probably washed threadbare from the years I'd end up living here. My clothes would be discarded, everything forlorn and irrecognisably stale. The secret files would be torn and destroyed. I felt so impermanent and lost in the size of time itself, so distant from even my own life and self, that everything seemed ludicrous and meaningless.

I couldn't see any sense in anything. None of it. I'd have cried, alone in the dark, if I had any tears left in me. That first night felt like it lasted forever. When I got out of bed and set about gathering as much information about ESPers and aliens as I could, my muscles ached in protest.

There wasn't much information to be had, in the end. The pack claimed I had all the information that I needed in the files, and I'd looked through everything else before I glanced once more at the thick envelope containing my mother's – Suzumiya Haruhi's – information. Though it seemed a highly unintuitive place to stick all the important information, it made sense in a strange way. I would have rather read anything other than more information about my mother's mad antics, and one sure-fire way to make sure I read her file was to mix in all the information I _wanted_ to read with it.

I was a little too scared of running into Nagato or Koizumi to venture out of the apartment, so I looked up delivery services in the phone book and had some food brought up to the building. I worked my way through biographical details that were at times familiar (Oh Mum, why _did_ you do that to your cousin? I never found that story funny!) and other times surprising (She knew how to sew? But she always made Aunt Yuki do all that sort of work for her...). It wasn't until I was well into the descriptions of her more adventurous experiences in childhood that I came across the real meat of the problem.

_At chronological age two years, Suzumiya H. encountered the focal subject _ - my father was unnamed in all the official documents. While Miss Miruku had warned me about this, and reassured me it was all just standard mission behaviour, I had a little trouble reminding myself every time – _and they engaged in the first transferral of transcendental powers for this incarnation. While further information regarding this event is restricted, please keep in mind for future briefings that the following events are anchored in a far deeper and older time-plane than the one your mission is concerned with._

_Official mission briefing is as follows: I am very sorry to have forced you to read through all of this first, but I wanted to ensure you had certain important facts established before we began the true description of your status. You are to act as a sleeper agent for the time being, and your task is to observe your assigned subject. In particular, be on the lookout for any supernatural occurrences. These are likely to agitate Suzumiya, and she may involve your subject in dangerous activities._

_Three years before your current time-plane, something interrupted and altered reality. This coincided with a meeting between your target and Suzumiya, about which you will later receive full information. Be alert and cautious of any time-sensitive events, as it is possible that other curious agents will be investigating. As a junior agent, you are subordinate to them all and your mission may be altered without warning according to their needs._

The report continued on in a similar manner. Stuffy and long-winded. The basic gist of it was that I should sit tight and not panic, in a world full of people I had once known as family and friends... who were dangerous and volatile strangers. That my mission was harmless... unless my mother did anything dangerous or stupid. And do I even have to explain the tone of my voice as I write that? Of _course_ she would do something dangerous and stupid! She took the Milliways approach to life: Three impossible things before breakfast. Since I actually was, apparently, quite close to the end of our universe (or anomaly, I suppose, if we were in a twisted weird time bubble), this didn't reassure me at all.

I went into shock. I could feel my muscles shaking, and the greasy food I had been eating felt heavy and uncomfortable in my gut. My hands began to sweat. I stared down at the papers before me, not really seeing them at all. I found myself missing the good old days, when I'd just been sitting in a classroom feeling overwhelmed by the complicated nature of the TPDD and the emergency code signals.

If anything went wrong, I'd... I'd be endangering not only my current life, but maybe all of our lives. Our timeline. What if _I _was the one who had caused the situation with my father? Oh hell, oh god, oh fuck.

I didn't often swear. I hate vulgar language. But I spat out all the vile words I could think of and felt my face heat up red with fury. That was something that I absolutely refused to let happen. I'd just have to take my duties very seriously, and be willing to admit fault. Be prepared to do whatever it took to protect him. And only then, if I was sure it was safe and stable and possible, would I dare attempt to find out what had happened. What would happen. I wouldn't try to save him unless I was certain it was within my mission parameters and within the bounds of human sanity. I'd have to be very tentative about it all, because there was a passion in my heart that _ached_ for a normal home life. I wanted to recover my father so badly... I knew in that moment that that was probably the most dangerous thing of all in this time-plane.

Me, and my desires. My technology and knowledge of the future, and the temptation to change things. Sure, it was one of the first things I was taught during my education. And it was also something I'd learnt from observation of television and film alone: meddling in time causes nothing but trouble. Especially your own timeline. I'd learnt it all before, but to be in that situation and to feel that knowledge in your bones, feel it so personally, was a profound experience for me.

The following information in my mother's dossier was far less surprising, given all the other startled realisations of the night. She was somehow directly related to whatever was causing problems in the timeline. She was a volatile individual, who could perhaps maybe we think potentially have the possibility of one day bending the fabric of the universe to suit her own ends.

Having lived with my mother, I wasn't surprised at all. Even though it was couched in very careful official language, she was Dangerous with a capital D. Capable of erasing me from existence, or destroying me slowly and painfully. Of rewriting who I was, and forcing me into situations and behaviours that I wouldn't feel comfortable in.

So in other words, It was like coming home.


	4. Chapter 4

**2003, North Senior High School, Tokyo**

Nothing happened. I had held onto the edge of my desk anxiously, anticipating that at any second now someone would come storming into my classroom. Or that I would hear an explosion. But instead, I simply slipped into my classroom as if I'd always been there, and the world was silent. I took observation notes on Kyon when I could, and submitted my reports regularly and calmly. And nothing happened.

Though I had worried that joining a second year class with such little warning would arouse suspicion, it hadn't. I simply introduced myself, and took my desk, to be followed by another new student. The boisterous and unnervingly familiar Miss Tsuruya. So I wasn't that out-of-place. And though I'd been sure that I'd feel foreign in this time-plane, with its old technology, I felt quite at home in my new surroundings.

I'd been warned that sometimes operatives who have travelled forwards become used to a higher level of interconnectivity and convenience, and can go into cultural shock over the clumsiness of old devices. Having attended school three thousand years in the future of my own natural time-plane, I had been concerned that I would be hit hard by the sudden silence and isolation in my own head. Instead I realised that I had been lucky enough to grow up to a certain age without any cyborg brain implants, and in some ways I felt more in common with these classmates and their frustratingly slow technology than I ever had with my previous friends.

I had time, a lot of time, to myself. Which was different. No quick trips back to the agency, or home visits with Mum on the weekends. Just the mission and my cover story and my life. So I thought about all sorts of things, as my classmates focused on their work. I had to pay _some_ attention, to keep track of all the inaccuracies I'd have to keep in my homework and exam answers, but the rest of it was all part and parcel of everyone's basic data package. Sure, you had to pass the exams on your wits alone, but then if you scored high enough you simply downloaded the data to your memory banks afterwards.

Anyway, I had more than enough time to daydream and think. I began to wonder if the problem with our agents really was due to disconnection with their technology. A lot of people in my natural time-plane argued that internet addiction and integrated GUIs in contact lenses, for example, were changing the way that humans interacted and lived completely. But they weren't, not really. They were just a different way for people to communicate. Language, words, music, pictures, data streams, it was all just related to the way we pushed information to each other. The human brain wasn't any more or less complex, even over all the hundreds of years we'd been innovating. Different in some ways, but still basically the same...

A scrap of paper slid onto my desk, folded over a hand-written note. In my last school, we'd run around devising trickier ways to connect with each others' interfaces, to get away with passing notes. But the principle was more or less the same. Distraction, misdirection, and practice.

I opened it. It was from Tsuruya, and cheered me out of my boredom right away.

_Nyoro ~ ^_^ Let's go to that store you like today? I need more wool 3_

Perhaps the other reason that I was fitting in well was my newly discovered fascination with traditional arts and crafts. I'd always admired their elegance; Mum had some calligraphy scrolls that were breathtakingly gorgeous hanging in the front hall. Now that I had free time, I'd taken up everything I could manage. I'd switched between the various clubs, finally settling for the grace and artistry that the calligraphy club could teach me. But clubs only lasted so long, and in my free time I had fallen into a comfortable habit of testing new techniques and tools with Tsuruya. You wouldn't think it to look at her, but we had a shared passion for experimenting and learning things. Though she did have a habit of selecting garish colours for her craft projects.

Her family was well established, had an old traditional house, and cupboards just full to bursting with old fabric and rich beautiful looking looms, knitting needles, pattern templates... all just so beautiful. As the stress and tension of the danger my mission posed to my own time-plane dissipated, I realised that this was quite possibly one of the happiest times of my entire life. Good companionship, a true sense of empowerment and independence, and peace.

_Don't you have enough at home? Though I *do* want to go myself. What colour do you need?_

I smiled attentively towards the front of the classroom, made some more simple notes in my exercise book, then found my opportunity to slip the note back to her.

The class passed quickly enough, and I was just reaching into my bag to retrieve my lunchbox, when a slender hand fastened firmly around my wrist. My heart stuttered in my chest. It was familiar, but different. Less strong, less wrinkled, less normal. I hadn't expected her, hadn't expected the feeling of disassociated vertigo that swept over me. Like time sickness, but a little worse.

I held onto that feeling, knowing that the blood had drained from my face, that my eyes were wide in terror. I turned to face her, trying to use my fear to stop myself from falling into familiar patterns of address, or even bursting into tears. My world hung in the balance, on a knife-edge.

"You're so cute! Oh, so cute! What's your name? It's Asahina Mikuru, right? Mikuru-chan? I scouted you, you're joining my club!"

I gaped, and then realised I was supposed to be answering her. Tsuruya looked alarmed and was getting to her feet, ready to defend me. But I had known that this day would come, when something went wrong. Changed somehow. So instead I spoke, to defuse the situation.

"Ah, um... I... eep!"

Well, all right. So I was still green behind the ears and not really up to the pressures I was under. I shivered and tried to avoid eye contact.

"Mikuru, are you alright? I can beat her up for ya if she's a sexual deviant!" Tsuruya clasped at my other hand, glaring at my assailant.

"I-I'm fine. No, really. Fine. You're Suzumiya-san, correct?"

She beamed, just beamed. That wide mad smile. But there was something wrong with it, so wrong that I couldn't name it. I felt a tremor in my spine.

"That's right! Ahh, you must have been noticing the activities of my exciting new club, hey? Come have a look, I'm sure you'll love it!"

What could I do? I'd recognised myself in the photographs, I'd followed standard operation procedure. I'd prepared myself as best I could for this day. It was inevitable, and now I just had to follow along with it all.

"All right. I suppose."

Tsuruya, open-mouthed, blinked stupidly. "What about this afternoon?"

I shrugged helplessly, feeling a drag on my arm pulling my body up and out of my seat. Across the room. "Another day?" I called back.

I stumbled on my own feet more than I ever had before, half-falling up stairways and finally being whirled around into a large clubroom. I stared around, my mind trying frantically to catch up to my body, trying to calm the shudders that still shook my body. Like a little baby, I could feel my chest jolt with a hiccup of fear.

I felt more ashamed than I ever had in my life. As I calmed down slightly, I realised that there was someone else in the room. My target. My... the man that would go on to become a father one day in the far future. He was facing off against her with a stern looking face, and that helped heal my fractured mind somewhat. This moment was more than I had ever felt capable of hoping for. Though he didn't know it, he _was_ my father, finally standing up on my behalf against the madness that was my mother. My eyes teared up with the realisation. Even if the world was destroyed, I had finally experienced a father's protection.

"... but that's not all, she's got bigger breasts than me! Big breasts!"

"AHHH!" I flailed. I should have expected such behaviour from her, really. But it came as a surprise. I could feel her young small hands clenching and kneading painfully.

Thankfully, my father was turning aside with a blushing face, probably ashamed at her brazen sexual abuse. "What are you, dumb?"

Her hands stilled on my chest, and her voice came out vindictive and cruel near my ear. "Want to feel?"

I hadn't known my eyes could stretch that wide. I squeezed them shut immediately and continued to fight against her. He might one day be my father, but right now he was only a fellow high-school student. I wouldn't be able to forgive myself for allowing such a perverted and disgusting act to occur.

"Uh, pass."

Oh, thank goodness. I have never felt relief that pure and reassuring. But as I was released and they continued to talk beside me, I found I still felt uneasy. I felt something strange and sharp and aching inside me. This girl wasn't my mother. She wouldn't be for years. This wasn't Mum, supernatural investigator of the extraordinary. This was Suzumiya Haruhi, a person of interest to my mission. This wasn't my father, whoever he had been. This was just my mission target. And in the corner? I found my eyes falling momentarily on those of someone familiar. Nagato Yuki. Not Aunt Yuki, who occasionally smiled in short twitches of her lips and who came over once a week or so for dinner. This was a cold, unknown alien in every sense of the word.

"I see..." I had said it aloud before I realised it. I quickly glanced from Nagato, to the smug expression on Suzumiya's face, and the blank exasperation of my mission target. I couldn't even let myself _think_ his name. I realised they were waiting for me to finish what I had started saying. But how could I? I couldn't just say "Oh hi, I've just realised you're not yet who you are going to be in the future," brightly and shake their hands. I had to say something that actually made sense and maintained my cover.

"I get it, I understand. I'll quit the Calligraphy club and join. But..." I racked my brain, trying to recall what the sign on the door had said. "But I'm not really sure what the literature club does."

They explained in an oddly synchronous dialogue about the true nature of the club, and in a way that made me feel homesick for my Mum, Suzumiya recited the full explanatory name of the S.O.S Brigade. I nodded and acted as politely as I could, and felt dazed as I sat down at the table before me. I found my eyes drifting to Nagato more than once. She had been named as the "real" literature club member. But I knew somewhat better than to assume she was just that. Android. Alien. While I was a time-travelling cyborg, and human gene splicing wasn't that strange in the future I'd been educated in, the presence of extra-terrestrial life was a bit confronting. Was she a replica of human bio-mechanics, or just a shell full of a higher level of wetware? How was she coping with the data-interfaces of this day and age?

More importantly... if she could synchronise with her future and past selves and transcend the time-plane sequences... was that Nagato Yuki the strange alien sitting there, or my real Aunt Yuki _pretending_ to be Nagato Yuki the stranger?

I'd always been terrible at guessing her moods. She was far too good at maintaining a blank stoic look. I stared down at my hands for something else to do, trying not to sneak too many curious glances up across at my target. When he was named as "Kyon", I was saved. It had felt a little wrong, seeing his name in clear letters on his dossier. In a way that I couldn't describe, really. I'd stumbled across a whole truckload of information that I possibly shouldn't have, learning all these strange things about my family. But his name was the only piece of information that I felt that I shouldn't know. I wished I could un-see it, in a way. But it had been logged in my augmented memory, and no matter how much I tried to ignore the information, it was there between my eyes. I clung to the nickname like a lifeline, repeated it over and over in my head, trying to use the rhythm of it to keep out any further realisations.

So these were to be my new companions. Suzumiya, Nagato, and... K... Kyon. Koizumi hadn't shown up yet, but I was pretty sure it would only be a matter of time now. More than enough had already gone wrong, and I could remember quite clearly the photographs at home. Mum, my father, Aunt Yuki, and Uncle Itsuki... and me. So really it was Nagato, Suzumiya, Kyon, and the as yet absent Koizumi.

I sighed heavily and let my head droop towards the desk. Kyon and Suzumiya continued to bicker over something. Nagato turned a page in her book, and I wondered if I could just sink through the desk and the floor, right down into the concrete and then dirt that lay beneath the school. Being buried alive would surely be less stressful and life-threatening than this.

Sleep helped a little, though not much. I was still exhausted and drained and dizzy feeling when I was putting my shoes in my locker and hearing Tsuruya's concerned voice as if from a distance.

"Heeeey, Mikuru my dear sweet Mikuru? Was it that traumatic, yesterday?"

I blinked and cleared my head. "No, not really. I just... couldn't figure out a maths problem from our homework, so I stayed up too late."

I had actually received the unsurprising news that my mission status and objective had changed. I'd been up late catching up on the information. The time-plane was destabilising, and I was to monitor Kyon and Suzumiya carefully. Be prepared to take action to protect the Ideal Timeline at any costs. It was the words "at any costs" that worried me the most.

"Oh-hoh!" Tsuruya smiled and shook her head fondly. "Want me to talk you through it later on?"

I winced and demurred, waving my hands in what I hoped was a gentle and not at all frantic way. "Ah no, I've got a um, a tutor. So I'll just ask... her... um, on the weekend."

Tsuruya seemed to be a little taken aback for a moment, but then she smiled in a confusingly knowing way and clapped me on one shoulder. "Right you are, then! So anyway, I went without you to get the wool in the end. And I saw this really brutal pattern for a coin purse! It's in my bag, I'll show you during roll call."

"You... went without me?" I followed her to our classroom in a bit of a daze, my indoor shoes squeaking slightly against the floor as we rounded a corner sharply.

"Well yeah. I mean, now that you're committed to the S.O.S brigade, I can't really expect you to be free this week. I've heard that Suzumiya can be a real ball-breaker, you know?"

I stopped completely, and stared as Tsuruya took a few steps away from me. Dazed, my voice came out even weaker and feebler than it usually did. "But... I haven't told anyone yet."

Tsuruya opened her mouth, looked away from me, shut it, and then opened it again to speak. "Well, I heard Kyon muttering about it on the way home. I was walking down that blasted hill at the same time he was, you see."

"Right." I smiled, but began to wonder if there were more persons of temporal interest in my life than Miss Miruku and my superiors had seen fit to inform me of. Still, Tsuruya was a nice girl. And the pattern she'd bought _was_ adorable and really clever. It would be better for me to keep an eye on her than it would be to suddenly start avoiding her. It would be safer, and I might figure out what was behind everything with her.

Also, it would be nice if I could at least learn that nifty stitch before anything went pear-shaped. It looked very useful and I'd be able to use it for much more than just coin purses.

The day was all right. Nothing further seemed suspicious about Tsuruya. I clung to the slow moments of the day, the feeling of sunshine on the skin of my arm through the classroom window and the sound of the teachers' droning voices. Anything to distract myself from thinking about what would happen as soon as the bell rang.

Suzumiya wouldn't be grabbing my hand today. I would be voluntarily and calmly walking to the clubroom on my own two feet. Though you could argue that my future mother's enthusiasm for madness like this club was what had pushed me into a career of time travel at so young an age, and that it was her distant hand pushing me along this path...

Uweeeeh, I was getting dizzy from it all. I took a deep breath and steadied myself by clasping my bag tightly and taking measured regular steps out of the classroom and along the hallway. Still the trip went by far too quickly, and before I knew it I was in the clubroom and being turned about by Suzumiya. With Kyon beside us, we were driven into the nearby computer clubroom by Suzumiya's unstoppable force of personality.

I was, all things told, beginning to worry about the chemistry between the two of them. Kyon seemed to just be alternately exasperated and nonplussed with her, and she didn't seem to notice anything of the sort. My own conception seemed like a far and distant dream. Would this be my mission? Was I supposed to work against all likelihood of success and aliens and ESPers and other time travellers, just to get my parents together?

It seemed ludicrous, but at that moment I would have believed anything. I was a little too caught up in my thoughts, distracted, as I saw Suzumiya grasp the wrist of the head of the computer club, and then thrust his arm forwards. I felt someone's, a stranger's, hand twitch reflexively and painfully around my breast. In Suzumiya's eyes was manic glee, as she dug a finger into the poor boy's elbow and forced his grip even tighter.

But that wasn't why I screamed.

It was Suzumiya's voice, loud and clear as she cried out "Now, Kyon!"

And the sound of the camera shutter as Kyon took a photograph and shattered all my stupid dreamlike naïve hopes that I would ever find a sympathetic father figure. It wasn't just the scream of a young girl being molested and exploited, but one of someone whose family and hope had been ripped away like a painful plastic adhesive bandage.

Oh mother, father, anyone! What did I ever do to deserve this?


	5. Chapter 5

**Unknown Chronology and Location, the agency; 2015, Suzumiya Residence, Tokyo; 2015 Tsuruya Residence, Tokyo**

So far, I've kept things pretty linear regarding my own life. So I wanted to preface this section with a bit of an apology. This is where things will get more confusing, so that the story makes sense.

Er, if that makes sense itself. Ah, growing older hasn't helped me at all. At least not with sorting out all of my thoughts and personal continuity errors.

But the world seemed very straightforward as I followed Miss Miruku Mizuyasu towards the bus stop. We'd left my front doorstep behind, and I was dragging my slightly over-packed suitcase. Mum hadn't made much fuss over my leaving, just nodding proudly and giving me a big heaving shove in the small of my back. I had stumbled down onto the footpath, and smiled awkwardly up at this strange and elegant woman. She was voluptuous in a somewhat familiar way. Her breasts were more or less the same size as my mother's, but she was obviously wearing very different underwear. They bounced around and looked like the shirt they'd been buttoned into was way too tight for them.

I felt a little embarrassed on her behalf. I'd had a pretty normal upbringing in that sense. I had some vague ideas about sex, but I'd never met anyone in real life who was so shamelessly willing to display their body in that way. Even Mum, who was a similar shape, didn't usually dress provocatively. Sure, she had costumes and silly gimmicks for some of her shows, but she at least kept herself covered adequately and wore fully supporting undergarments.

I was thinking more about my own fear of adolescence and puberty than I was about the trip I was taking. In some ways it must have been a means of self-protection. I knew relatively little about the agency, and I was still dizzily full of the heady feeling I'd had since deciding that I would exploit my access to time travel technology. I caught Mizuyasu looking at me curiously as we boarded the bus, and turned my head to stare out at the street. If she was a time traveller, then maybe she already knew what was going through my head. But just in case, I did not want to give the game away before it had even begun.

It was all so normal. We paid and I fumbled my baggage down off the bus. With Mizuyasu attracting a lot of attentive glances in her outfit, I must have been almost invisible. A girl in a school uniform, holding a travel suitcase and looking lost wasn't an odd sight at this time of year in this suburb. Every month more people were sending their children away from even the outer suburbs of Tokyo, so that they could live in more central areas and attend better schools. We had disembarked near a train station, and I followed Mizuyasu dutifully through the turnstiles (she paid my fare).

We caught a train, and then another bus. By then I had very little idea, young as I was, of which area of Tokyo we were in. But Mizuyasu's feet were purposeful as they led me down the side of a street and then in through a very traditional style archway. A tall and elegant looking woman, about the age of my Mum and Mizuyasu, greeted us with a delighted smile.

"Ah, Kurumi-chan!"

I started. How on earth did she know my name? Miss Mizuyasu shook her head with a small smile and then waggled a finger at the woman.

"Miss Tsuruya, now that's hardly the way your mother raised you to greet guests, is it?"

This Miss Tsuruya raised an eyebrow down at me, and laughed. I felt a bit like I was being left of out a conversation... that was being had with me. I didn't get the joke, whatever it was. But Miss Tsuruya seemed to take a shine to me. She hefted my luggage with bravado and nodded in a jokingly stern manner.

I realised that I was probably scowling, and not behaving myself at all. I bowed to an angle that I hoped was appropriate. "Pleased to meet you... Miss Tsuruya."

"Oh you're a polite one, really." She said it like it was a bad thing to be. As I raised my head to try and catch the expression on her face, I saw that Miss Tsuruya was giving Miss Mizuyasu a very wry smile. "Both of you, of course."

Miss Mizuyasu tsk-ed and then winked back at the woman. "I'll have to have some words with you later, my _dear_ friend. But for the moment, may the young Miss Suzumiya and myself make ourselves comfortable in one of your spare rooms?"

Tsuruya nodded, more formal now, and then shrugged one shoulder casually. "Sure. But take your shoes along with you, I've had enough problems with abandoned footwear to last me a lifetime."

"Of course. Miss Suzumiya, if you would mind?"

"Ah, r-right. Not at all." I toed my shoes off and hooked them onto my fingers, trying not to get too much foot-smell on my hand. We followed Miss Tsuruya down a polished wooden walkway, past rooms hidden behind wall-screens. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of a shadow behind them, a snatch of a disturbingly familiar voice, but I never had enough time to stop and register them properly.

It was a large house. It took a few minutes, but then all too soon it seemed we were being ushered into a small and dusty room. It had quite obviously not been cleaned in some time, though there were a series of footprints visible. Someone had been in the room before us.

Miss Tsuruya left without a word, just a sweet smile for us. She put my bag down on the floor and slid the screen door shut behind herself. Once she was gone, Miss Mizuyasu laughed to herself, shook her head again, and knelt down slightly to show me something in her hand.

"This is my TPDD. It's what lets me travel through time, and we're going to use it today to skip forward a bit, so that we can visit the agency headquarters."

I nodded solemnly. This was it, my first real trip through time. Sometime not too far from now, I'd be trusted with one of these enough to make that trip back in time to myself the night before, confirming my faith in the supernatural and setting me on this path.

I reached out curiously. Miss Mizuyasu, who was already precariously balanced in her tight-fitting clothing and short skirt, wobbled. The TPDD fell. Automatically, I reached out and caught it.

And the room was dark. It was less dusty. It was larger. The wooden floor beneath my feet was cool, and I could see street lights shining through a window to my left. But there hadn't been a window, a few seconds ago...?

I swallowed nervously. This wasn't good at all. I could hear the soft shift of sheets that was... oh hell, it was myself from the night before. Lying in bed. I could feel dust tickling in my nose, and I sniffed rather than sneeze explosively and alert my mother to a very confusing situation.

I stood stock still, hoping that the TPDD would snap me back to the right time somehow, hoping that I wouldn't notice myself.

But, of course, I did.

"Are you...no, that's impossible, I..."

"Uweeeeeh!" Even though I'd known it was coming, it came as a shock. My mind was blank, and I had no idea on earth what to say. I should remember, should know, but I _didn't_. I tried to think, but my mind just spun empty and useless.

But time moved on, and in the silent darkness my past self spoke. She sounded aghast, but also in awe. I didn't remember feeling awe or excitement, but I could almost hear a hint of my mother's own eagerness and hope there. My stomach felt heavy and leaden, my feet couldn't have moved if I'd tried to lift them.

"Oh god. It's true, it's all true."

I avoided meeting her eyes, looking down at the TPDD and feeling my shoulders tighten. I had no idea of how to use it. None at all. There were numbers ticking down, and just as I got the idea in my head to try and say something to warn myself about this dilemma, I noticed that the numbers were moving with the seconds, counting down to zero.

I couldn't do anything. I hoped that I would be yanked back to my proper time when the count-down ended, but in case it didn't...

"I'm so, so sorry." I wasn't sure if I was sorry for my past self, or my own chilling realisation about myself. But before I had time to finish a single thought, the TPDD had finished its count-down.

The sudden brightness of the small room came as a shock. The TPDD in my hands let out one soft electronic beep, and I raised my eyes to meet those of Miss Mizuyasu. I was stuttering, "I-I-I..." and hoping that I hadn't made a huge mistake or broken anything.

But Miss Mizuyasu's face was open and friendly and calm. She cupped her hands – warm hands – around mine and cradled the TPDD in our closed palms.

"I'm so, so sorry that it's affected you like this. Er, dear. I'm a little new to this myself, and I should have given you a bit of warning. But we do this for all our new trainees. We simulate a carefully planned travel failure, and let our trainees feel the real danger that being lost in time can pose to ourselves."

The information sank in slowly. Gently, she took the TPDD back and made a show of twisting the device in a way that seemed almost impossible.

"This is the emergency recall. It's a bit hard to get the hang of, but it automatically programs in a safe time-stamp and brings you to the agency. In case of terrible or immediate emergencies."

I looked carefully at it, then her. "Um, it hasn't... it's not..."

"Yes?"

"We're still here."

Miss Mizuyasu tapped a finger against her lip thoughtfully. "That's a good point. Tell you what, I'll get your bag and hang onto you, and you can try it. Twist till you hear a click like a breaking bone."

I felt her slender fingers close around my upper arm, and gave her a shocked look. "Bone?"

"Ah, sorry. There aren't that many injuries like that in this time-plane, are there? I'm carrying some baggage from my last mission, do forgive me."

"Oh, not at all." My polite response was automatic and reflexive. How I had learnt such manners while living with my mother? I had no idea. Maybe it was like the tea; I had learnt how to apologise to other people because Mum never did.

I clasped the TPDD in my fists and with a quick glance at Mizuyasu's encouraging smile, I wrenched it into a twist, feeling resistance against my hands. I pushed as hard as I could, my fingers burning against the not-quite-plastic feel of the TPDD. It made a low grinding sound and then popped with a wet sounding crunch that I could feel right up to my elbows.

And we were in a larger room. Well lit, with flat strips of lights along the roof, walls and floor. It was otherwise bare and concrete, but there was a convenient pile of towels in the corner. Beside them were a thermos, a block of chocolate, and a first aid kit.

"We won't need any of those ourselves, but sometimes things can get hairy in the field. It's always best to be prepared."

I swallowed nervously. If they'd wanted to discourage rule-breaking in their recruits, they couldn't have done better. I was terrified of falling back in time and getting lost, or injured; of accidentally creating a paradox with myself.

"Right."

Miss Mizuyasu regarded me for a few seconds, then she swapped my bags over for the TPDD and led me out into the hall.

"We frown upon overuse of the emergency recall function, so please only ever use it in the field if you are in peril. Not for your own life – though we do prefer our operatives to complete their missions without dying horribly – but for the continuum of the Ideal Timeline. If your presence is threatening to destabilise the time-plane, then you can jump out quickly. There will be a series of protocols about getting out of dodge that you'll pick up in one of your yearly training programs, so don't worry too much for the moment. Just remember to not do that again unless you have to, alright?"

"All right." Though I was quite worried that I would need to know how to do it all, and that I might forget and be stranded. It really hadn't been a nice experience.

The hallways of the agency were empty and silent. Our feet echoed as we took several turns and walked up one flight of stairs. The doors in this hallway were closer together, and the smooth surface of the floor was scuffed and dirtied in certain places. It seemed a little more lived-in than the other corridors, and it set me somewhat at ease.

Miss Mizuyasu settled me in my room and left, giving me time to unpack my bag and get used to the small room that would be my home for the... hmm, well, I actually had no idea how long I would be living there. But it was obviously going to be a while. I hung my shirts and skirts in the wardrobe, folded pyjamas and jeans and other things into a few small drawers, and sat on the flat mattress of the small bed. There wasn't much to see, really. No bookshelves or power outlets. A small sink was set into an alcove beside the door, but that was it, really. No windows.

I got up and ran my hands all around the walls and small desk that sat blank and empty before me. Nothing. No seams, no hint of anything there. So how did it all work? I was in the future, obviously. So there would be some sort of mechanism or fantastic trigger that activated a whole bunch of mechanical devices, right?

Or there would be a device, like the TPDD. Only for entertainment or educational purposes. Maybe electronic paper, like we had been starting to see produced commercially in my own time. Thin magazines made out of two sheets of barely visible laminate, that triggered at the appropriate touch to display the hidden information.

Hmm. Maybe they'd done away with the physical element all together? I began tapping at the desk, and swirling my hands around, trying to see if I couldn't chance across the right action. I couldn't. But then, I remembered the marathons that Mum and Aunt Yuki had held, watching entire series of Star Trek until their bodies were wasted and weak, and they fell asleep on the floor of our living room in an uncomfortable looking huddle.

"Computer?" I tried. But there was no response. I suppose that a verbal interface was pretty inefficient, all things considered. It was something suited to a TV audience, not any real functions. At least, except for someone with a vision impairment.

Hmm. I poked into corners and was on my hands and knees looking up curiously at the underside of the desk when there was a soft chime from near the door. I jumped, bumped my head, and backed out sheepishly. Then I searched around the door itself, trying to see if there was a button or catch. I'd gotten so caught up in my search that I completely forgot that there was a perfectly good doorknob.

Before whoever was on the other side of the door could knock again, I wrenched it open and did my best to look like I hadn't just spent an hour or so rubbing my hands along walls and staring at furniture. It felt very stupid now that I had realised there weren't any hidden computers or devices. Miss Mizuyasu was there, again smiling. She looked past me into the room, raised an eyebrow, but then shrugged and waved for me to follow her back down the hallway. At the end, we turned into a new area. As we walked, I began to catch the scent of food.

There was a small cafeteria that didn't seem to have any staff. Just a bench that held two covered trays and a thermos of tea.

"It's about time for lunch, so we'll finish the tour and get you your basic equipment and textbooks afterwards, all right?"

"Ah, sure. All right."

It was a nice and clean and simple meal. The vegetables seemed rougher than I was used to, and their shapes were irregular and a little twisted. When she noticed me inspecting a small wobbly chunk of carrot, Miss Mizuyasu nodded to herself – I began to wonder if she had maybe met my future self, and was having a much stranger experience of the day than I was – before speaking.

"Food is produced and consumed differently. Cosmetic appearance of raw food is considered less important than nutritive value and the gardening practices. So I can imagine that there will be a bit of strangeness as you get used to that. Some of the flavours will be very different, too."

I looked at the carrot with great interest. "I see. It sounds like something Aunt Yuki would say."

Miss Mizuyasu laughed. "Yes, it does."

"You _know_ her?"

Miss Mizuyasu coughed and gave me that odd smile again. "Oh yes. Though it can get, er, confusing, because I've travelled in time quite a lot. She met you before she met me, you could say. Though I've known her since I was born."

It didn't make much sense, but I imagined that not many of the circles and strange chronologies that a time traveller's life would involve _could_ make much sense.

"That's very interesting."

"So you can call me Miruku, if you like. Mizuyasu is so formal, it seems weird."

I nodded, and continued eating. I let my eyes scan across the very normal looking posters and notices on the wall. There were a lot for such a small room, bumping shoulders with a few framed photographs and a window that looked out into a small green courtyard.

Wait a second! I looked back at the photograph, and there _I _was. In a strange school uniform, and slightly older, but it was me. So I'd graduated primary school and was still a time traveller. It was probably a bad idea, but I couldn't stop myself from asking.

"What's that picture of?"

Miruku craned her neck to follow my line of sight, and nodded. "Ah yes, that's my primary school graduation photograph. From when I was training."

I felt some very scary knowledge rise in my gut, and I found myself turning my head away, not letting myself think about the implications her statement might have. For instance, maybe they sent all trainee time travellers into the same school and time for training. Maybe she was one of the other children in the photograph.

"I'm in it." I'd wanted to ask a question or come across sounding intelligent and capable of handling the strange things that time travel would throw at me, but instead I just sounded forlorn.

Miruku laughed nervously and asked for me to pour her a cup of tea. When I bent my head to keep a sure eye on the cups – the thermos was quite tall and full and heavy – I heard a quiet and gentle click of wood being lifted, then set down somewhere further away. By the time I'd carried the cups over to the table, Miruku was sitting back down in her chair and the photograph of the graduating class had been replaced with a very nice framed cross-stitch of ripples and autumn leaves in a pond.


	6. Chapter 6

**2024, the agency, Tokyo; 2024, Department Store, Tokyo; 2024, Suzumiya Residence, Tokyo**

The mistake that I made when I agreed to undertake that mission - of teaching my childhood self the basics of time travel and helping her to naturalise in her first future time-plane implanted school year – was assuming that it would be easy. That I had already lived it once, and so the more important parts of it would come as second nature to me.

Human memory is fallible at the best of times. And there were innumerable other tasks and considerations that had been taken to safeguard my psyche and shepherd me into the training. All those times that I had been left alone to myself to deal with personal matters or to study the textbooks I had been given? Those were the times that mattered most. When I had to rush around studying and checking multiple time-planes and notes, to make sure that I hadn't misstepped.

I think, perhaps it was a bit of a punishment. My superiors at times were quite bossy and cruel. And the mistake I'd made, the assumptions and errors... in some ways maybe it was more a lesson in caution. All of the things I should have been doing and keeping in mind during my previous mission. Everything I had failed at.

It made it difficult. I was trying to remember, trying to memorise and learn from this experience, trying to keep track of chronology. Because the distracted Miss Miruku Mizuyasu hadn't shared the same linear chronology with little Kurumi Suzumiya. The first time I met Kurumi the child (and it was odd to be separating myself from myself in my head with every thought) she had known me for six months. I was invigilating and then marking her final preparatory exam for her first training period.

She did quite well on the questions, though I winced in horror at some of the mistakes. They didn't hurt my pride any less the second time around. Still, she passed. She would be let out of the isolation of the agency's barracks and implanted in the year 5011 for her first year of middle school. It was the final year that children in that time-plane were taught without the interface upgrade to their biological hardware. Kurumi would have one normal school year, and after _that_ final exam, she would be having a brain augmentation upgrade and programming basics summer class.

The next time she encountered me she would be capable of quick data transfers and my task would be much simpler; I could simply recall my saved data from those teaching periods and regurgitate them into her datafeed. But she had no idea at the moment. She only knew that she was going to be sent into her first practical implantation, and you could just see the excited tension in the way she carried herself. The fire in her eyes reminded me more of my mother than myself at that age. But I was always caught unaware by that resemblance between us all.

I wondered if anyone outside of my direct "family" of friends and blood relatives would notice it. When my father was the boy Kyon, and I had been under cover on my first mission, he'd never seemed to pick up on it. In fact, quite the contrary. I had always worried most about breaking my cover, but it had been the least of my concerns.

I smiled as pleasantly as I could, and did my best to be excited and proud of Kurumi. But I could distinctly remember how let down I'd been by my teacher's reaction, after the exam results. So my act came with a certain amount of apathy and resignation. I hardly knew myself, in a situation like this. Was I this distant because I was still reeling from the way my mission had ended, or was I reacting to my own memories of the day?

It was very hard to think about. Those sorts of paradoxes always left me dizzy and reeling. I forced a wider smile onto my face and nodded encouragingly. "I'm really proud of you, Kurumi. You made a couple of careless mistakes, but everyone does in a stressful situation like this. More importantly you showed a lot of insight on some of the trickier questions. You're going to be a real asset to the agency."

She blinked up at me, her stern expression shifting into one of hopefulness. "Really?"

"Oh yes. Remember, we're the agency. Trust me, I know you'll do perfectly fine." I was talking about her early schooling, not about the mission I had just botched. But it still felt awful in my mouth, like I was lying to myself. Buying into the darker machinations of the agency and The Organisation.

"Miruku?"

"Oh, I'm fine. Sorry Kurumi, I just didn't sleep well last night. Why don't you make us some tea in the cafeteria while I send this off. Once we've had a break, we can get you kitted out and set up for your first long-distance trip."

She nodded amicably enough and I sat at the desk, trying to still my shaking hands as I heard her light young feet against the well-polished floor of the hallway. It was as if I'd been in shock for the last few days. As if the weight of my own failure hadn't sunk in quite yet. I had, quite deliberately and thoughtfully wrought the most horrible thing possible. The thing I had been working against this whole time, and I'd been the perpetrator!

I ran my fingers through my hair, clenching them into fists and tugging until my scalp stung in what felt like a thousand pinpointed stabs into my skull. I couldn't even remember what had happened during _this_ time period any more; had Miruku ever shown up in the cafeteria? I had no idea. But I couldn't have shown up anytime soon, not in the state I was in.

I barely noticed when a calm steady hand slid the sealed envelope with the test paper out from between my elbows. But when the hands returned, emptied, to hold firmly onto my shoulders I felt myself calm. My frantic shallow breaths evened out with only a few hiccups, and though my arms were still trembling they felt more secure. I ventured a snot-nosed, tear-stained glance upwards from beneath my fringe, to see the very welcome sight of Aunt Yuki.

"I have come to retrieve you." She said simply, though I could hear the difference from Nagato Yuki in her voice. But unlike all those stolen synchronous moments during my mission, I knew that she wouldn't have vanish abruptly. Haruhi wasn't around to walk in unexpectedly, and Kyon...

I must have started sobbing again. Just thinking about him had my heart aching and my mind overcome by this white wall of desperate guilt and pain. I remember calming down to hear Aunt Yuki's patient voice repeating the same phrase. I had no idea how long she'd been doing it.

"You are relieved from duty, it's time to come home now."

"Oh thank goodness." Just knowing that, I could slump forwards boneless against the desk and let the tension go. I wouldn't have to sustain any personas where I was headed. Well, aside from the obvious cover; I couldn't reveal my previous undercover identity to my mother. With an ease brought from years of practice, I brought out my TPDD and offered a hand to Aunt Yuki.

"Shall we use this?"

Aunt Yuki looked at me silently, an eyebrow quirking in subtle amusement. "We shall use the door."

It had never occurred to me to wonder about _when_ the agency barracks existed. I had always assumed they were somewhere special in the distant future, or perhaps hidden slightly dysphasic with our plane of reality. But as I followed Aunt Yuki on wobbly legs I realised that we must currently be in my native biological time-plane.

For confirmation, I reached forward and held onto Aunt Yuki's hand. Partly for the reassurance and physical contact, partly for the data transfer. Yes indeed, it was Christmas eve and I was for the first time in a very long time chronologically and physically where I should have been. Without a word, Aunt Yuki fished a packet of tissues from her pocket and handed them to me.

"We should purchase some gifts before your return. Your mother will be sad that you have no souvenirs."

I shrugged in agreement. "She wouldn't believe anything I brought back, anyway. She'd just say I got it from your house, or something, to save on effort."

Aunty Yuki didn't reply, and within moments we were on a crowded train heading to a shopping centre with other Christmas shoppers.

"It's busier than it used to be, this time of year." I said.

"Yes. I recall the time during my second-last year of high school where the crowds were far less busy."

I couldn't really come out and say that I remembered that day. Not yet; my mission was still too raw inside me. But Aunt Yuki hadn't said that to reminisce with me. She had been reminding me that she was synchronous. That of everyone in my world, she was accessible and aware and always accepting. Capable of being as non-linear as I was.

The crowds were overwhelmingly large, and I felt a little lost in it all. But Aunt Yuki always knew where to go, and she led me up several flights of a department store to stand before a display of boxed-set hard drives of media.

"You will buy me this, though I have no need for data in this format." She stated.

"Is... do you like Babylon 5 that much, Aunt Yuki?"

She stared immovably ahead. "Negative. I have synchronised with myself from tomorrow morning to assist your shopping. You will be distracted by your other purchases and forget that I have no interest in this item, purchasing it anyway. I will find the archaic form of data retention both confusing and reassuring, and thank you for the gift."

Her short speech would have felt strange to me earlier in my life, but it was comforting. Neither of us were constrained to a linear consciousness, and she was right. Knowing what I would purchase would make the whole trip home easier. It would help me deal with the crowds and with the faces Mum and Uncle Itsuki would pull if I didn't bring them nice things.

"Alright. Well... I'll think about it. Let's move on to Uncle Itsuki?"

Aunt Yuki nodded. "Of course, this way."

She led me to the section of the store that carried hardcopy novels, their pulpy paper pages still popular despite the efficiency of ebook readers. Aunt Yuki strode purposefully towards a shelf and pulled out one written by a popular classic Sci-Fi writer.

"_VALIS_ by Phillip K Dick? Are you sure Uncle Itsuki likes this sort of book?"

Aunt Yuki nodded. "Tomorrow morning he smiles and comments on his interest in the book, and that he is committed to reading it soon."

"Ah, that's a relief. Thank you." Hardcopy books were expensive, especially hard cover nicely bound translated ones like this. But if it would make Uncle Itsuki happy, it would be worth it.

"Now we go this way."

We weaved in and out, and ended up at a photo-processing booth. Aunt Yuki presented the attendant with a ticket, and when he returned with a gift-wrapped package I paid for it in a confused daze.

"So who's this for? Mum, I assume."

Aunt Yuki said nothing, and began walking back towards the lifts. It was getting late, and an announcement about the imminent store closure was emitted from the archaic looking mounted speakers near the roof. Her silence confirmed my suspicions.

"What is it?"

Aunt Yuki turned to me and with an even blank stare she said, "Classified Information."

I sighed heavily and slipped the unknown gift into the plastic bag that I had got with the book for Uncle Yuki. "It feels good, doesn't it, that I'm not going to be saying that anymore. I bet you've been waiting for years for payback like this."

The lift arrived before either of us could say anything more. But on our trip down to the bottom floor, I heard her quietly ask from beside my shoulder, "Do you know the nature of your mission failure?"

I opened my mouth to reply that I did indeed know, but instead came out the most welcome words I had ever said. "Classified Information."

It wasn't particularly good news. It could have meant many things; that the nature of my failure was different though my actions were unchanged. That perhaps I would have a future mission to redact some of the horror I had wrought on the time-plane. Or maybe, that my involvement was a coincidence and that there was hope yet.

As the doors opened and we joined the customers leaving the store, all headed home or out to Christmas dinners with their loved ones, my heart stopped. I had completely forgotten about finding something for Aunt Yuki. No longer worried about appropriateness or quality, I rushed to the ground-floor checkout, only to see a promotional display case with one box-set pre-loaded HDD Babylon 5 collection left. An American show, my internal database recalled for me that it had enjoyed a recent cult following in the SF&F upsurge in pop culture. The whole thing was probably my mother's fault – as always. Her and her stupid show.

Aunt Yuki placed the box calmly on the counter, and with a defeated sigh I swiped my card, paid up. As we walked along the cold dark busy streets to the bus stop – the quickest way home at that time of day – I gazed ruefully at the box.

"It's such an inelegant way to transfer data. So... large, and clunky and temporally vulnerable."

We sat and waited in silence for a long time. It wasn't until we'd disembarked and were walking down the last street before my house that she answered.

"I think, rather, that it has a beautiful nobility to it. It contains data, knowledge, but is not self-aware. It relies entirely on inefficient and almost impossible processes to interface properly, but still it does. Blood is shed in the countries that supply the rare metals, wars fought over its birth. It deserves a unique reverence that the simplicity and economy of my provenance could never earn."

Her words made me think of the images I'd seen of Europe once; megaliths and ancient castles clean and dry and completely clean of the blood that had been spilt in them. The sense of presence that just a photograph of some of those places...

"I understand completely."

Aunt Yuki did not reply. She opened the door and for the first time since my mission deployment, I was home.

"Helloooooo? Is that you, Itsuki? Bring them in here!"

"I apologise but I am not Itsuki Koizumi." Aunt Yuki stepped inside and I followed, my taller body and longer arms feeling a little strange in my old entryway. Had it always been this small?

"YUKI!" My mother burst around the corner, her hair in a ponytail that swung wildly around her head. She looked rosy-cheeked and breathless, and there was a huge swipe of flour across her forehead. Then her smile froze. She looked over me. Stared at me, eyes wide and blinking.

I bit my lip. It had been years for her. She wouldn't remember it the same way. She'd known me as a daughter, now. Everything was different, though to me it felt all too recent and raw. But then she was smiling, laughing, tears in the corners of her eyes. She flung two too-strong arms around me, clasping me tight against her, my head pressed into her shoulder. I dropped the presents, but I barely noticed, I was so short of breath. Clasping at her desperately. I was finally home. This wasn't Suzumiya, this was my mother. I could feel it in the different shape of her body, and the way she smelt of anything but high schools and uniforms and all full of flour and our old detergent brand. She pulled away from me far too soon.

"It was you, wasn't it?" She was still smiling, her voice gentle and hushed. "All along, you were Mikuru."

I nodded silently, worried that she'd get angry or meet my eyes with that same dead and resolute gaze. But instead she as good as near exploded with noise, whooping and clapping me solidly on the back. She wrapped an arm around Aunt Yuki's own, and nudged her with her elbow.

"Ha-ha! I always knew you were a suspicious sort, Miss Not-Asahina! And what a silly anagram! Thank god Kyon never got the balls up to ask you out, or we'd have been in a real paradox."

I felt my sentimental experience draining away as the reality of my homecoming set in. Once my mother, always my mother. She dragged Yuki into the living room, and I collected my dropped parcels before following them.

"Although, that would have been pretty cool, wouldn't it? Inter-generational incestuous time-loop paradox! Uhyaaaaaaaa, what a mess! Maybe I should go into writing supernatural dramas that involve causality sex scandals?"

She wheeled around. Aunt Yuki dangled from beneath her arm floppily, obviously resigned to her fate. Mum's face turned serious for a moment, and her eyes met mine quite steadily. Aunt Yuki boredly removed Mum's arm and made herself scarce.

"Kurumi... Mikuru... whatever we call you, you're a good girl. I didn't raise you to be stupid, or have a father-complex, so stop feeling guilty. _Do you understand me, SOLDIER?_"

It was easy to fall back into one of the terrifying games we'd played during my childhood. Far easier than breaking down and crying and hugging and crying some more. So I snapped my feet together, saluted, and in the bravest voice I dared – which still came out meek and timid because my mother was a scary ferocious woman – I replied "Sir! Yes, sir!"

When Uncle Itsuki had arrived, and I finally handed around the presents, he gave me a very funny look.

"Alright, Kurumi, I've got something very important to tell you. It's a secret rule that adults like us know; you were too young to understand this before now."

I inclined my head. He took a deep breath and shared a knowing smile with my mother.

"We never listen to Yuki's Christmas gift suggestions. She always gets them wrong. Like this? This is her way of reminding me about her own superior intellect and taste. Pah."

There was a rustle beside me as Mum opened her gift. "Oh I don't know, sometimes she does pretty well by me."

I turned my head to see what it was. A simple frame in which there was a blown-up cropped photograph. You couldn't see the worst parts that had been in the shot that day: Haruhi's hand on my breast, Kyon's defensive indignant stance. You could just see her, smiling. Me, blushing and looking over my shoulder, and Kyon – my father – gazing down at both of us with an unreadable expression. It might have truly been one of shame or fear or astonishment, but with the way Aunt Yuki had timed the shot and cropped it, you could almost pretend that we'd been a real, linear family.


	7. Chapter 7

_Author's Notes: Oh dear, I had no idea that I'd get such an odd response to the last chapter. I'm very sorry to anyone who thought that I'd chosen to end things there. I promise you, I mark all completed fics as complete, so no more worrying in the future. It might help to keep in mind that this story is not being told in linear chronological order, or even Kurumi's personal chronological order. Things may seem more final than they are. Also, is there anywhere in any of these chapters that outright mentions death, funerals, tombstones or memorials? No news is no news, and absence of evidence is only evidence of absence, not death._

_The book mentioned in this chapter is Forbidden Knowledge by Stephen Donaldson._

_Thanks so much to everyone who's reviewed so far, especially those who've had criticisms or points of interest; there's been some useful and constructive comments and I really value them._

**2003, North Senior High School, Tokyo; 2003, Koizumi Residence, Tokyo**

I wasn't adjusting to the time-plane of my parents adolescence very well at all. Uncle Itsuki was, surprisingly enough, quite similar to his past self. Mister Koizumi was all politeness and smiling friendliness when he joined. In the end, I found myself far more awkward around him than any of the others. I was in far more danger of betraying myself near him. When I had the chance I made tea, tidied the room, and excused myself to the bathroom or to the library to find a book. I did not like the thought of being in a conversation with him, or the same room as him.

Aunt Yuki had always been the person to suggest novels. Not just Science Fiction, either, though she did have a soft spot for those. As my mother had been overwhelming me with her ghost-hunts and terrifying stories, Aunt Yuki had been sending me ebooks, real books and other media at very carefully chosen intervals. Since she'd been the one who helped me smuggle slice-of-life and romance comics into the house (when Mum more or less set anything not supernatural or conspiracy related on fire), I had grown to trust her taste and judgement. I had also learnt that she didn't offer her own books up to strangers.

She valued them – valued all data related technology, no matter how old – with the reverence and respect that humans were supposed to hold for their ancestors. So when I showed up, meek and afraid, after a hellish week operating under my new mission parameters, I was incredibly shocked to have a book pushed across the table towards me.

"Huh... I mean, yes? Miss Nagato, was there something you wanted me to...?" I was flustered, and had no idea how to react. I recognised the book. During my early childhood, she had kept it sealed in a glass cabinet. This was a favourite of hers. A special book. I'd never touched this copy; she'd bought me a reprint of my own when I had a large enough vocabulary to read it.

"You should read it." She said flatly. It was hard to pin-point at any given time the way that this blankness was different to the Aunt Yuki I knew, but the difference surely was there. Distant. She had a distance from me, because she had no memories or knowledge of me at all. I suspected that her normal wryly joking manner was missing, too. If it was there, it was buried deep.

"I know how to read books! I mean, more... this is your own, right? Why not just tell me to go borrow one from the library?" I opened the beautiful hard cover and turned to the page with the bibliographical information. "See? This is a first edition, and it's from when the author wasn't very well known. It's rare, and a real piece of science fiction history!"

Nagato stared blankly at me. "It is."

I couldn't tell if that had been a statement or a question. I felt like slamming my hands into fists and punching the table, but I had a job to do. I had to calm down, contain my irregular moods and hormones. I had to maintain cover, not reveal anything suspicious, especially to her.

"So you shouldn't go around loaning a book like this. I couldn't possibly presume to take it from you. No, I'll take your recommendation and go take a cheaper copy out from the library, and..."

As I spoke she flipped the cover closed – it nearly caught my fingers in it – and shoved the book towards me resolutely. "I insist, Miss Asahina. Please read this."

Well, if she was going to be so careless with my Aunt Yuki's favourite book, I might as well look after it myself, I reasoned. To the unaware Miss Nagato, I nodded humbly and accepted the book. I took great care while packing it into my bag to not bend or harm it.

"I will read it. I have heard a lot of good things about this author, so I am sure I will enjoy it."

She had no time for me after that, though. Miss Nagato walked in a precise line across the room to her usual chair. She sat down with mechanical movements and picked up a book, turned the pages quickly and regularly as she read. The sound of a vocal and energetic voice, Miss Suzumiya, came echoing down the hallway. I started at the sound, but Miss Nagato had no visible reaction. Not even when Suzumiya threw the door open and strode in screaming in eagerness and brandishing a thick laminated paper shopping bag. I was so used to being manhandled by my own mother that she'd got half my top undone before I began honestly protesting.

"Ahh, no! Miss Suzumiya, I..." I tried to fight back, but I hadn't started early enough and she already had my shoulders pinned. I cast a desperate glance over to Miss Nagato, but she simply kept reading as if the situation had nothing to do with her.

"Please, stop! What are you doing?" In the hysteria of the moment it was hard for me not to laugh out loud. I knew that look in her eyes. If I hadn't caught a glimpse of her face, I'd have been able to smell it on her, she was so close. Freshly washed fabric and thread. Ironing and sewing, is what she smelled like. She had some stupid costume in her bag for me. Probably stupid alien inspired fashion or a character costume. I'd suffered them my entire life. I had guessed this might be coming.

But then the doorknob clicked open. Kyon was there, struck motionless and agape. I gasped. I fell still, and Suzumiya kept on wrestling my clothing off for a split second before she realised anything had happened.

"I...I..."

The photograph had been bad enough, but this was worse. Because Kyon had just been the medium of my humiliation that day; this time it was entirely different. I'd attracted enough looks from other boys in the last few years that I knew it when I saw it. He was... no, he was _going_ to be my father... and he was staring at my... at my...

I felt faint and wrong inside. I wanted to do what Suzumiya was doing, yell and scream and kick him out of the room. But I couldn't do anything more than draw in gaspy painful breaths and shriek as I was pushed half-over the desk. Suzumiya stripped me mercilessly, ranting all the while.

"Boys. I don't know, Mikuru-chan! Jeeze they make me mad! What did he think he was doing, just staring at you like that? You can't even undress yourself now!"

I formed half-hearted replies in my mind. She was the one who hadn't locked the door, and if she'd asked me to cosplay for her I probably would have, and it really wasn't Kyon's fault that it was so awful for me – it was all my own, for wanting this assignment and thinking that I could know my father, cheat time and... and it all just came out as weak sounding half-words and gasps. My eyes were a little wet and stinging, but Suzumiya didn't notice. I bent my head, let my hair fall between us as I took over buttoning up the dress.

It wasn't, after all, what I had expected. A too-short and far too fetishistic costume, tight in the wrong places for someone with my self-confidence. Suzumiya wasn't the experienced seamstress she would become in her adulthood; the seams itched and sat a little wrong. It was restrictive and hard to move in properly. But it was far from the worst thing that had happened to me all day, so I just went along with it.

I don't... really want to talk about what happened next. When I try to think about it now I laugh a little, but recounting it like this makes me feel a little disgusted and violated even till today. I have to do it like this instead, a brief short list of what happened. Kyon came back in. Haruhi made him take photographs of me. She pulled open the top of my costume, and... they took more photographs. I tried to play down my emotional reaction at the time, but that moment has left a scar deep within my heart that lingers to this day.

I think that was the moment that I started growing up. Seeing the people in my life not as reliable loved ones, but unpredictable elements who were just as wrapped up in their own lives and dramas as I was. Suzumiya and Kyon could not sense or see their genetic relationship with me. My Aunt and Uncle were not guiding forces in my life. I felt struck suddenly by my own frailty and ignorance; I hadn't known about the potential instabilities within Suzumiya – my own chronology – before I came here and read the dossiers. I hadn't known the true purpose of my assignation until I had been activated, as it were, from being a sleeper agent. It was possible that there was more that I was unaware of. The rules against forming romantic or strong relationships while embedded made complete sense now. It wasn't about cruel separations, but about the unknown. Time paradoxes.

I was aware enough, but were they? When Suzumiya was done with me, I gathered my clothes and bag. I went home as early as I dared, and showered, washed all of it off me. I cried until I could feel my sinuses and skull hurt from the pressure, and then I sat damp and dehydrated and exhausted in my bedroom. I needed to escape, and I had nothing better to do, so I got myself a glass of water and sat down to read the book Nagato had leant me.

I had read it before. The book had been part of the literature data-dump I had received before coming on my mission. I could refresh the text in my memory any time I wanted to. But touching base with something so familiar and recognised from my childhood might help me. Heal me. It had been one of the stranger books to be included, but now with my heart broken the way it was the whole thing made sense. Not just the book itself, but the whole series it had come from. All of them, on my required reading list.

I had just caught myself up with the over-arching plot and was getting into the suspense of it all, when the bookmark fell out from between the pages and into my lap. Like always, I was so busy hating the character of Nick Succorso that I was torn between reality and fantasy. I wanted to keep reading right to the end of the series, to see the bastard shamed and beaten and dead. But there was writing on the bookmark. Clean tidy writing. Nagato's handwriting? No. It wasn't... regular enough. And there was no way that Nagato could have known to put the bookmark in _this_ book, at _that_ page. Nagato would quite absolutely never have known which colour to write in, a lovely purple. This was from Aunt Yuki!

_I am aware of your mission, as is Koizumi. Our purposes are best served collectively. Please proceed to the address listed in your file on Koizumi this evening._

I had no idea how she'd sent it to me at the time. I was so overcome with the week and day that I had had that I forgot the mission data I had obtained on my first day. I completely forgot about Nagato's atemporal synchronicity as I jumped up with renewed energy and scanned my memory for the address, matched it to the public transport timetables, and shoved my keys in my pocket.

On my way up the stairs to the old and large semi-detached that Koizumi's family lived in, the chill of the night air and the respite of the trip over finally let my own mind catch up with me. I stood for a moment, feeling sheepish and stupid. Of course Aunt Yuki had written the letter, planted it. She was atemporal. She could synchronise with past and future selves at will, and then revert. It was far less surprising, in fact, than anything else that had happened that day. I found myself introducing myself to Koizumi's parents curiously, wondering how Aunt Yuki – or Nagato – had explained everything to Koizumi. His ESPer abilities obviously left him with a head-start in figuring it all out. The organisation he was a member of was dubious, and I was supposed to be _minimising_ contact with him, but I was curious. I had questions.

Mrs. Koizumi ushered me into Koizumi's bedroom with a plate of biscuits and a tray of tea. It had three cups, but only Koizumi was in the room. We exchanged pleasant enough greetings.

"Well, I'll show Miss Nagato in when she arrives. Good luck with your revision, you two!"

"T-thank you, Mrs. Koizumi."

Koizumi smiled brightly and moved to shut the door. "Yeah, thanks Mum."

Koizumi rubbed the back of his neck as he turned around to face me. I realised that for him, this was the first time we were truly meeting. He'd always been in my family, so in a way it was a first for me, too. I laughed awkwardly.

"Nagato said she had to wait for Kyon. We've decided to enlist his help a little, to keep Suzumiya busy and occupied. She should get back soon."

"I... see." I sat down awkwardly on the floor, and pulled a textbook out of my bag, to make the room look like it was really hosting a study session.

Koizumi joined me, crossing his legs and resting his back against his bed. "Look, I know you have files on me. And you know I'm an ESPer, which is probably making you awkward." He smiled in a way that wasn't as brilliant as usual, but softer and more welcoming. "Yeah, I've picked up a bit from you, but I've been more concerned with Suzumiya and Kyon. I only really know that you're uncomfortable around all of us, and that you don't like using our given names. So let's do this the old-fashioned way and just talk it out. Hi, I'm Itsuki."

I bit my lip and poured the tea into cups for something to do. "I... I don't know if I can call you that, I'm sorry. It's too... soon. You do know that I am from the future?"

He nodded, smiling. "Yeah, and it's pretty cool. I mean, Nagato is a little cold and clinical. I'm excited, I'll be able to ask you about all sorts of things!"

I shook my head. He was being too nice, too polite, chattering away happily. "No." I said more firmly. "I mean to say, that Asahina Mikuru is not my name."

I didn't have to say my real name aloud. I could tell from the way his eyes widened and his mouth went slack that he'd caught the words that echoed so loudly in my head. Nothing is louder than your own name, I recalled, from an essay I had written in middle school, in a day and age when ESPers were out in society and generally accepted.

"That... so... you know what happens?"

I shook my head sadly. "No. And I have no idea really why I've been sent here. My current mission is to observe Suzumiya and report back regularly, but I keep getting updates and small side-missions that seem to make no sense. Go here, do that." I sipped my tea and took a moment to think carefully and as subtly as I could about how to phrase what came next.

"I've... Mum has photographs, in an album." I found myself confessing abruptly to break the silence. "Her, you, Aunt Yuki, Kyon... and me. All my life, I wondered who on earth that woman was. Kyon and Mikuru were missing, all those years, and then when I came on my mission, I..." I set my cup aside and held my hands apathetically in my lap. "I didn't know how to react, but it all made sense then. I share my high school years with... well, it's easier if I call her Suzumiya-san."

Koizumi nodded, and then snorted. "_Aunt_ Yuki? Oh, that's a laugh! Does she know how to smile in the future?"

"Not really, no. And don't laugh too much, _Uncle_ Itsuki."

He half-choked on his tea. "N-no way? That's mad! So what about Kyon, then?"

The smile died on my lips. "He... disappeared. Before I was born. I've never known him as a father, just here."

Koizumi looked like he'd been slapped. He rubbed a hand over his face, and his eyes took on a sad strained look that was familiar to me. Except unlike Uncle Itsuki, who laughed it off and carried on, this Koizumi sat frozen as tears welled in the corners of his eyes.

"Oh. Oh, that's just... I know she likes him, but a guy has to hope, right? When she smiles at me, I... and I've been watching her, inactive, for so long now... I always hoped..."

I couldn't contain my disbelief. "You mean that... you, and Mum, you...? Oh my god, Uncle Itsuki never said a thing! And Dad was gone, he could have done something... never did..."

Koizumi met my eyes, and we just looked at each other. I felt like I had broken something myself, and it was the least I could do for him, to be a witness to his pain and loss. After what felt like an eternity, the sound of the front door downstairs being opened interrupted us. He looked away, I picked up my cup and took a bolstering sip of lukewarm tea.

"Well," his voice shook a little, "I guess that by then I just got over it. Maybe it will be easier this way..."

The bedroom door opened, and Nagato walked inside. She shut it behind herself, turned to take in the sight of the two of us huddled on the floor, and said simply, "Initialising synchronisation." She tilted her head upwards, and to my augmented vision the connection with the Data Sentient Entity looked like data transfers felt inside my head. It was like synaesthesia, all glittering colourful sounds and things that looked like ideas sounded in my brain. It was punctuated with odd alien chirrupy bits.

It mustn't have had that effect on Koizumi, because he sighed as if bored and returned to our conversation. "Do you think that might be why you were sent back? To prepare me, or prevent any intervention in your own conception?"

I frowned. "Maybe. Though I don't think we usually send agents out to anticipate things that aren't recorded. I mean, some things are just immeasurable. And we try to avoid rewriting history, we just work on stabilising the malleable parts to prevent catastrophe."

He looked at me curiously. "But maybe, yeah?"

I shrugged helplessly. "Maybe..."

It was Aunt Yuki that spoke from behind me. "No. Koizumi, I did explain to you about this earlier. Asahina-san does not know herself what her superiors are going to order next. It is her mission to complete objectives, not to be aware of what implications her actions might have."

Aunt Yuki had hit the nail on the head, though it was a sobering thought. It didn't stop Koizumi, though. He turned to look up at her beseechingly. "She doesn't know, but _you_ can! You can synchronise with your future self, I know you can!"

Aunt Yuki frowned, and the skin around her eyes tightened. I could tell this wasn't an easy conversation for her to be having. "I require approval and confirmation from the IDSE to initiate a synchronisation. I do not have permission to access that knowledge currently."

Koizumi accepted it with a defeated sigh, but I could tell from Aunt Yuki's behaviour and expression that she hadn't even bothered to check. Whether or not she could access that information, she was sure as hell not about to tell Koizumi.

With a nod of thanks at me, she picked up a teacup and took a calm sip. A little unsure of how to go about it all – Uncle Itsuki had always been the one comforting _me_ after upsets and accidents – I mirrored what he did. I put a hand on his shoulder as gently as I could, and turned towards him so that my face and eyes were open, accessible, if he needed the human contact.

"Love doesn't always have to end in a relationship," I said eventually, when he was showing no signs of recovering, "and like I said, Kyon disappears. I never get to know my father. But Uncle Itsuki – you – were – I mean, are. Er, well, will have been. You will always be there with us. With her. We are a family together... you never technically lose her."

He nodded, and took my hand in his own. "I'm sorry. You're probably facing the worst of all of us, and here I am being like this..."

Because it would make Aunt Yuki smile, and because I'd never get away with it if it was Uncle Itsuki in front of me, I poked Koizumi in the forehead with my index finger and then shook my head. "It's just nice that I'm not the one cradling a bruised ego in the corner for once. Trust me, I'll pay you back and then some when I get my turn."

"She will, that is confirmed." Aunt Yuki said. Koizumi blinked away his tears and stared past my shoulder at Aunt Yuki.

"I... thought you said she didn't smile..."

I craned my neck to see the upwards quirk on Aunt Yuki's too-young face. "If I'd said 'yes', would you have believed me?"

Koizumi hung his head, nodding and laughing. Impatient now that the issue had been dealt with, Aunt Yuki moved in beside us on her knees and offered the biscuits around.

"I will have to revert soon. Kyon may contact me; I must only synchronise with the self that Asahina knows when it is absolutely necessary. We must conspire while we still have time, tonight."


	8. Chapter 8

**2003, Cafe, Tokyo; 2003, North Senior High School, Tokyo; 2003, Bookshop, Tokyo**

Conspiring with Aunt Yuki and the young dejected Koizumi made the whole thing into a bit of a game. It also meant that I got my own back against Kyon, for the crime of incestuous ogling of my breasts. We were playing more than a few tricks on more than a few people. But basically, the way that it broke down was this:

Suzumiya Haruhi thought that the S.O.S Brigade was assembled _by_ her and _for_ her. She had a crush on Kyon that she did not understand, and was highly susceptible to his suggestions.

Kyon thought that the S.O.S Brigade was assembled by Suzumiya, but that it predominantly focused on himself. He was made aware within the week of our first meeting of our individual supernatural identities (Time Traveller, ESPer, Computer and Omnipotent Being) and was under the impression that the antics and crises he was involved in were the extent of the Suzumiya problem.

I thought that the S.O.S Brigade was an inevitable and partly concerted accident derived from Kyon and Suzumiya's confusing capabilities and shared past, along with the needs and designs of the three main interested powers represented in our conspiracy: the agency, the organisation, and the IDSE. Everyone seemed connected back to me in that sense, but since we had started playing those games with Kyon's head I had become suspicious even of that. It was quite possible that Nagato, Aunt Yuki, Koizumi or even my superiors back at the agency were deliberately distracting me by having me create these distractions...

Nevertheless, our objective – once Aunt Yuki had desynchronised and Koizumi and I had explained what Nagato needed to know – was to observe and stabilise the time-plane as best we could. To maintain some sort of _statu quo_ while we all reported to our superiors and tried to make better sense of what was going on. Now that Koizumi had calmed down and accepted his broken heart, we were able to face the greatest problem of all: where did Kyon go? What was going to happen that would remove him from our lives, but not our memories? Was it something we were trying to prevent, or something that we would eventually orchestrate?

The information that Nagato had distributed amongst our circle of three hadn't made us feel any easier inside. There were... others. A rival data-based consciousness and implanted agent. A rival time travel agency. A rival ESPer organisation. Diaphanous and vague, we had never encountered them. We had not been warned or briefed about them, though apparently our superiors knew of their existence. Luckily – perhaps unluckily – Nagato could read the base code of the universe that we lived in, and she had noticed their strange behavioural patterns. Their group was nearly identical to the S.O.S Brigade, right down to a girl with Suzumiya's powers, save for one element. Kyon.

It did not sit well in my stomach, that knowledge. I couldn't contact my superiors unnecessarily, but I sent off a query anyway. I had not received any confirmation that my message had arrived, nor any response. The communications silence alone chilled me to the bone.

So when I was out with Tsuruya for a coffee, bags holding our newly purchased craft kits placed carefully on the seats beside us, I was shocked to discover there was something that I had missed. I had been complaining about the discomfort of Suzumiya's sewing skills, and wishing that Tsuruya could have had a hand in my maid's outfit. My friend had nodded with a laugh and said...

"Yeah. Though at least she's not making you wear the bunny outfit, that'd be really terrible!"

I blinked, confused. That sounded ominous. "Bunny outfit?"

Tsuruya frowned, then put a hand on my forehead. "Nope, no fever. You must have blocked the memories from the trauma of it. Suzumiya dressed you up like a playboy bunny, and made you hand out fliers for the S.O.S Brigade. Don't you remember?"

I didn't. I hadn't been there. There had been a scandal over some sort of fliers, I remembered Suzumiya ranting about it. But nothing about a costume, or myself. I should have been paying better attention to the chronology here, but I had been distracted for the last week and a bit by my new-found confidantes.

"Oh, yes. Please, don't make me remember that!" I faked a shudder, raised my voice, hoped that I sounded as girly and weak as I did when I was traumatised. It was then that I realised that coming across as a whiny scaredy-cat might be a very useful talent for a time traveller. A good cover at a time like this.

There was something a little too keen to Tsuruya's eyes as she nodded. Her smile reminded me of someone I had met in my childhood. Someone involved with the agency... but even if she knew about my identity in the future, she could hardly be aware of it now. I couldn't tell her anything.

My wristwatch beeped. I glanced down at it, shocked to see that I had a mission update waiting for me. I couldn't assess it here, so I excused myself to the bathroom and locked the stall behind myself.

I was very fortunate that I was wearing a school uniform. I was, apparently, about to find out in a few moments what Tsuruya had meant by "playboy bunny". At least, I assumed so. For on one of the days that I had had a normal recess and lunch with Tsuruya (followed by an evening spent compiling status reports), I was now scheduled to revisit the S.O.S Brigade clubroom and complete a mission that would "become apparent" when I arrived.

I eyed my wristwatch dubiously, but then resigned myself to my duty. I retrieved the TPDD from its hidden holster and set in my co-ordinates. I would have to arrive early, and then hide somewhere until I was certain that my past self would not notice.

I had as a matter of course scouted out all the best hiding places in the school. Cupboards, shadowy areas, locked doors that I could pick with my toolkit. But the best place to hide in any school was a bathroom at recess. Sure, there were exceptions. But not at North Senior High. It _did _have to be the right bathroom, obviously. One far away from the places that people needed or wanted to end up during their breaks. For a generation that hadn't quite experienced the benefits of ebooks and digital data accessibility just yet, the library was really underused. I had been a little surprised to hear that the Literature Club had died a slow and ignoble death, due to lack of interest. But there was just something about books that my classmates and fellow students just did not like.

So the toilets beside the library were ideal. Unlike the distant bathrooms on the top floors of the school, they weren't seen as a good place to get away with sex, drugs, smoking, or anything untoward. If you were normal, you were eating lunch or talking with friends; you would use a bathroom near your classroom. If you were a deviant, you would not be near the library. So it made sense for me to choose a stall in there.

It would have made sense, that was, if it had not been for Nagato. Though I'd seen her visit the bathroom during my childhood, I had assumed that an alien computer interface wouldn't need to perform anything so... biological. When I found myself back in time, holding my TPDD and staring at Nagato as she was poised over a toilet bowl, I couldn't do much more than gape and splutter and then excuse myself abruptly. I unlocked the stall and pulled the door shut behind myself. As I turned to the sinks and debated whether I should hide the TPDD or wash my hands first, the lock slid into place with a harsh shove.

By the time Nagato had finished, flushed and washed her hands I had gathered myself appropriately. I took a deep breath in, and out, and reminded myself that Aunt Yuki had already been synchronising with Nagato although my past self did not know yet. My identity and role here were not secret.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to make a mistake like that. I was over-confident, and forgot to actually check this time-plane. It's a mistake we're warned about in training. How embarrassing."

"I do not understand." Nagato stared at me. So, perhaps she wasn't as aware of the situation as I had hoped.

"Do you forget everything, when you revert? I thought you might retain some data, the relevant parts..."

I trailed off, concerned. Nagato stood and stared blankly at me, no sign of any comprehension on her face. Though it occurred to me that even if she was following me, she probably wouldn't have shown any expression.

"... I mean to say, when you synchronised with the IDSE to confirm my identity and mission as a time traveller..."

Her head snapped backwards with a painful cracking sound, and I witnessed a much harsher and abrupt transfer of data with the IDSE than I had on that night in Koizumi's house. Concerned, I moved forwards and tried to touch her neck, make sure she was all right.

"I am pefectly fine, Ku... Mikuru. Forgive my mistake."

I shook my head emphatically. "Not at all... Aunt Yuki?"

Aunt Yuki nodded. She looked quite uncomfortable in her young body. "The request for synchronisation came very suddenly. It was... disorienting."

I laughed, more to relieve the tension in my own chest than anything else. "You... well, you should get the IDSE to make sure the version of you in this time period takes things a little easier. I thought your neck was broken, there."

Aunt Yuki nodded thoughtfully, and then began looking around the room curiously. "So this is the day that..."

"I have to wear a demeaning costume, I know."

She held up a hand, and I could see a very welcome Aunt Yuki smile on her lips. "No, this is the day that you buy me a book."

She began to leave the bathroom, and I followed her, legs trotting to keep up. "No, Aunt... I mean Nagato... Yuki... oh dear! I'm supposed to be incognito, waiting to attend our club, and..."

I followed along, trying to explain and getting very flustered. Aunt Yuki was quickly and matter-of-factly leading me out of the school and down the street.

"There are more important things at risk right now than the time-plane. You must follow me, child."

I would have objected that she was just as much a child as I was right now, thank you very much, but she was already leaving me behind in her wake as she headed towards the train station. She did not say another word to me as we bought tickets and caught a train – and ignored my frantic appeals to her for more information or any response at all – until we had alighted and left the station onto a street outside a shopping complex. There, in plain sight of the station, was a dingy-looking secondhand bookshop. Yellowing humid rotting manga and pulpy light novels jostled for space on racks and in boxes propped up against the front walls. But when we moved closer and I could peer through the dusty window, I could see a very familiar dust-cover. This was verging on paradox. I had... that exact same book within my bag, hanging from my shoulder.

Aunt Yuki half-frowned for a moment, then she pulled out a blank slip of paper from her pocket and leaning on the dusty window wrote a quick message out.

_I am aware of your mission, as is Koizumi. Our purposes are best served collectively. Please proceed to the address listed in your file on Koizumi this evening._

It was my bookmark. As if she was running short of time, Aunt Yuki thrust the bookmark into my hands and spoke emphatically with far more emotion than she usually showed the world, "You _must _buy that book. Give it to me, and then help me get Koizumi on-side. Nagato, I... my past self, I will resist you. Be strong."

Her head fell forwards. To a passer-by, we might have looked like nothing more than two schoolgirls skipping class and browsing books. But Aunt Yuki was gone. Nagato kept her head down, but stood stiffly, awkwardly beside me. She appeared to be thinking very deeply. I decided that I had better leave her to it. I stepped inside, and holding my breath against the musty smell of the old books I took the rare and vital one from the display shelf and paid for it.

It wasn't even rare yet; there wouldn't be a film or cult following for years. It cost me all of four-hundred yen, and was wrapped in a brown paper bag that had seen better days. I felt like I was being made party to some sort of joke on the universe, or perhaps some sort of sacred secret concerning the nature of our culture and society.

Or, in the end, maybe it was just a book after all. I joined Nagato outside and handed her the bag. "This is for you."

She nodded, and spoke in a quiet dull voice. "Nobody buys me books. Rather, nobody has bought me a gift before today. Not outside the circle of my inferiors, at least. Thank you."

I inclined my head. "You have inferiors, then?"

She looked at me. "I assumed that you had a greater knowledge of my mission than you appear to. Please disregard my previous comment."

"Do you mean about the inferiors – Mum would call them minions, you know – or the thanks?"

She looked at me, but said nothing. Then she turned away and we headed silently to the station. On the train ride back to school, with the slow thumping of the tracks beneath us, she pulled the book out of the bag and stared at it dumbly.

"It is in the middle of the series," she said, "and I have not read any of them yet."

"Oh, that's all right," I replied, "because I need you to lend it to my past self in... a day or two, I think. I'll check my chronometer when we get to the clubroom."

The look that Nagato gave me was shocking. Defensive and angry. It left me with no doubts that she indeed felt emotions. It was just that she didn't feel anything for any humans yet – she was jealously protective of her books, and books alone.

I handed her the newly made and improvised bookmark. "You see? I've come back to make sure you can lend it to me, but with this inside it. You'll get it back before the end of the week. In that time, you can locate and read the first book in the series, maybe even get the rest of them too."

There were a few silent moments between us. The train paused, doors opened, and nobody embarked or disembarked before it moved on.

"I am aware," she said finally, "that this makes sense. But I should mention that it _should_ not. I had been led to believe that Suzumiya was the focus of my operations and the cause of the data explosion three years ago. Now... I am not certain."

I frowned and looked down at my hands. They didn't seem to be my own at all, not any more. "You think this has something to do with me? Aside from the obvious, I mean?"

When Nagato paused for thought, you could hardly tell that she had a fully functioning biological interface. Skin did not twitch, hairs did not shift, her chest barely rose at all and it was hard to believe she was breathing.

"I extrapolate from the data-dump received after de-synchronisation," Nagato said, "that you did not accidentally miss this afternoon's coming incident with the costumes."

I let that thought of hers sit in my head for a while, searched some of my internal databases on the agency idly. I wondered about it. If I hadn't noticed my own meddling on this day – or Nagato's absence, or Koizumi's battles in closed space in the past – what else I was missing, every day. What was being wrought in this time-plane not only by our rivals but by our own superiors.

It sent a cold shiver down my spine. "That doesn't make me feel very comfortable." I said.

I didn't expect Nagato to _be_ Aunt Yuki, but I swear it could have been either of them looking sternly at the floor of the carriage and saying dully, "It is not supposed to. Accurate data is rarely pleasant. I have theorised this is why humanity behaves so irrationally; to avoid accurate data at any cost."

I thought about my Mum's job in my natural time-plane, the tabloid supernatural journalism and the entertainment world in general. Then I realised that Nagato had, in a way, made the sort of joke that only a computer could. She had distracted me from the blood-chilling thought that I had very little control over my own mission updates; that Suzumiya or perhaps the entire world was being manipulated not because of her own powers, but because of me.

Because if Suzumiya could alter reality, create data-bombs and closed spaces and rewrite history; if Kyon was possibly capable of similar things.. what was I, their genetic descendant, capable of? Who might realise or notice our biological relationship? What was I not seeing?

"I'm not arrogant enough to think that I'm in the middle of this." I said as sternly as I could. I prayed that I was right. Nagato said nothing at all.

After all that, I had worried that I'd be too preoccupied with thoughts of temporal intrigue and my hardened resolve to start demanding better information from the agency once I'd returned to the right time and place at the end of my day. But, as it turns out, suddenly worrying that I'd either destroy the planet or get kidnapped by strange unknown forces for devious ends was actually a good thng. It meant that every single word that was spoken; every shift of trees in the courtyard scared me half to death. As demeaning as it is to admit it, I maintained my meek and distraught persona as I was forced to parade around in that leotard outfit, though exploitation and personal degradation were pretty far from my mind.


	9. Chapter 9

**2025, Suzumiya Residence, Tokyo**

Although I had returned to what would have been my natural chronology at Christmas, and we_ had_ had a family gathering that evening, reminiscing about the S.O.S Brigade and not mentioning the more sensitive time of its dissolution, that was really all just happy coincidence. A popular holiday and a homecoming. The real family event – the one that marked the years for us and had since before I could remember – was Tanabata. In the humidity of summer my mother had always organised for us to do something odd.

For several years that I could barely remember due to my young age – Uncle Itsuki had told me the stories often enough they were _like_ memories in my mind – the three adults toting the young infant me had broken into the same place every year. There they had carried out this weird ritual of marking the ground that seemed to serve no purpose. Public attitude was swaying more towards faith in the supernatural, however, and by the fourth year of this there were crowds waiting with cameras and eager hungry eyes.

Mum hadn't liked that at all. It eventually gave her the bright idea to work on becoming a supernatural investigator – obviously enough people wanted to know about these things that she could make a career out of it – but at the time it had been upsetting. With Aunt Yuki holding me in her steady arms and Uncle Itsuki hiding the wire-cutters behind his back, we had apparently followed my fuming and upset mother to a different location.

But, as I said, I only really have Uncle Itsuki's anecdotes for a memory of those nights. What I _do_ remember were the later alternatives that Mum devised. To create her strange and annually varied iconography we targeted like strange graffiti artists (or maybe guerrilla culture jammers) the tall, the broad, the visible. It began with relatively easy things: renting hotel rooms and sneaking up in the dark to use gaffer tape and chalk on the large roof spaces. Confidence tricks and faking our way into sports stadiums and unused airport runways with picnic baskets and backpacks full of paint cans.

As I grew and became both more autonomous and scared of the outings, Mum had escalated. She ran fake Alternate Reality Games and had replicas of her symbols set out on beaches and deserts and university sports fields across the world. We took a holiday in Europe and in an anonymously hired car rolled a weighted banner out along the Autobahn. It had twisted and torn and curled behind us – nobody from space could possibly have read it – but afterwards even my young heart was pulsing with adrenaline. We stayed up and watched the sun rise from between hotel-clean chemical smelling curtains and talked about anything, everything, without any goal or direction or thought.

My last year before entering the agency, Mum had almost gone mad with it all. She had Aunt Yuki breaking into automated lighting and traffic systems, using traffic patterns and the city at night to create a huge and glorious message. I only knew now that I had become familiar with adolescence and looming adulthood, just how hard Aunt Yuki's brain had worked to plan that in advance. To hack into networks and make the whole thing work without being noticeable to the individuals going about their normal nights.

I had missed out on Tanabata a few times during my training, but never three times in a row. I had never attended our little family celebration on equal footing with everyone, either. Everyone knew me for who and what I was, whether I had gone by the name of Miruku or Mikuru or Kurumi. During the months that I'd been settling back into a regular pattern of home and work in my Miruku persona, I had found myself marvelling at that on several occasions. I was not having to hide and second-guess myself anymore, and the trauma of my abruptly ended mission was slowly easing and healing inside my heart.

Even if it had been my fault, there was forgiveness. Still, I had taken several days off and was determined to throw my entire being into making this first Tanabata back home the best the family had had in years. Not that anyone seemed willing to let me do any work. Uncle Itsuki and Aunt Yuki had been suspiciously occupied for the whole day, and Mum was bullying me into letting her play with my hair.

"Tanabata's in a couple of days," I said as she smoothed her thin bony fingers over my scalp and gathered two handfuls of hair, "shouldn't we be getting ready?"

She began combing, gently de-tangling. She was... mild and nice, and it had me a little on edge. But Mum was someone who always had everyone around her feeling like they were teetering on a precipice on tiptoes. And she'd always done my hair like this when I was young. I was very glad, every moment that I saw her these days, that the Suzumiya I had known during my high school mission was not the same woman that raised me. She had changed, softened, filled up with love and hope in a way that I hadn't had the perspective to see before.

"... do you know the Tanabata story?" She asked me. I felt a little guilty that I'd been enjoying the feel of the comb in my hair and not hearing her words.

I shrugged. "I know a few. Like that one you told me, about how it was allegory for cold-war tensions. Though I even pointed out then that was impossible! Tanabata's been around for way longer than that!"

Mum laughed softly and tapped on my skull with the comb.

"Ow!"

"No, I mean the real story. I looked into it once, when I was a kid. I found all these similar stories around the world, too. It's about Altair and Vega – the stars – or Tanabata and Mikeran, or even some European people whose names I've forgot. Anyway."

The comb was making my hair static and frizzy, she'd been combing it for so long. But I sat, captive and rapt. I felt that maybe I was being included in some huge secret.

"So anyway, the basic story goes like this: through magical means or accident or trick, a young man manages to meet and fall in love with a woman. Sometimes she's a star, or goddess. Other times she's a selkie – that's a human who can turn into a seal – or a changeling or a cursed princess. And it always involves clothing or a coat of fur or something too. Anyway, there's a condition to their relationship. Mikeran – that's Hikoboshi – lies to Tanabata – Orihime – about where her clothing is. The European guy peeks like a pervert when his wife is changing before bed. And within a second, her secret is revealed and thanks to his impatience their love and life together is ruined."

"Ruined?" I craned my neck a little to try and see her expression, but just got another tap on the head for my efforts.

"Ruined. The selkie woman must become a seal again. Heartbroken, Tanabata can no longer remain where she is. They are all parted. But there is always a chance for redemption."

Mum was tugging and braiding my hair into small sections, letting them fall long and untied over my shoulders. They looked uneven and messy from what I could see, but I was too interested in the story to mind. I had heard different versions of the story myself, but I'd never realised that there was a global and common plotline to it.

"If – _if_ – the man can complete a series of trials, then he can come home and be reunited with his lover and family. One man has to make a certain amount of shoes, cloaks and staves. He has to walk the globe without rest until he's worn through them all. And they're iron shoes, thick tough hides of cloaks. He ruins himself and wastes his entire life trying to come home. Becomes old and lonely, a broken old man."

I bit my lip. My eyes were smarting, and Mum kept speaking.

"Mikeran was required to make shoes, too. I don't remember the others very well, but this is Tanabata, so of course I remember this one. Mikeran had to make, I think, about one thousand pairs of shoes. In most versions he dies before he can possibly finish the job."

I couldn't help but think of my father, wherever he was. Mum's hands were shaking a bit as they moved slower in my hair. I took a deep steadying breath and asked her, "Most? So in some of them he finishes?"

There was a long silence before she answered me. Her hands sped up again, tugged painfully on my hair as if she was trying to anchor herself to my scalp.

"In a way. In one version of the story – only one – he rushes himself. He can't bear to be away from his love and their children, so he hurries and is careless. He finishes and as instructed buries the shoes. On that spot a bamboo tree grows, that he has to climb to reach Tanabata. But he hasn't made enough. He's miscounted, he's one shoe short. So he can get high enough to see her through the clouds, but never reach her. And now we're back to the story you know; he jumps and somehow miraculously makes it across. But his weak will and fickleness makes Tanabata cry. A river grows between them. Altair, Vega, and the Milky Way."

I didn't cry. But I bit my lip so hard it hurt. I sat silently and waited. It was a long time before anything moved in the room; Mum's hands were still and heavy on my head.

"Of course, when it's Altair and Vega, once a year we can see them close to each other in the sky, reunited. That's the most common end to the story. They find each other again."

She brushed her hands over my hair again, clasped my shoulders and pushed forwards, urging me up. I stumbled to my feet and into the kitchen without looking back. I needed some tea.

"You probably don't remember where we used to hold our Tanabata activities, before we got more serious about it all?"

I dithered for a moment as I put the kettle on. "Uncle Itsuki's told me about it, an old school somewhere?"

"East Junior High."

With the boiling kettle, I thought perhaps I had heard that wrong. "Where, sorry?"

Mum had come up behind my by then. She jabbed me in the shoulder and gave me a scolding, fond look. "My vague child genius, you're going senile early. Precocious in every way! My old junior high school. East. Junior. High."

I gaped. I couldn't do much else. "I... I went there too."

She laughed with delight. "Really?"

I nodded, and busied myself with cups and tea. "In the 5000s, I think. During training. It's probably very different now than it will have been then."

"Hmm? Ma-aybe."

Mum gave me a funny look as I went about steeping tea. She crossed and re-crossed her legs impatiently.

"So... you know the layouts of the sports grounds pretty well?"

Her question was so casual that I answered thoughtlessly while bringing our cups over to the table.

"Of course. I was always trying to hide and get out of sports, you know I'm terrible at that sort of thing. I learnt every corner and shadow in that place."

Mum snickered at me. "Now _that_ you must get from your Dad's side of the family. Or maybe it's just a side-effect of all that time travel."

"Maybe it's just PTSD from being raised by you." I muttered. I got an elbow in the side for that.

"Oh! Ingrate! We'll see how cocky you are, when I'm making you use your knowledge of the target location to break us in! You'll be just like John Smith that day, pushing the cart and taking orders from the direction of my superior intellect!"

"Uh Mum... you run a TV show, and I'm a secret time-travelling spy. If we're going to talk about intellect, then..."

She spilled her tea gesticulating wildly and interrupting me. "See? I even have _you_ fooled! It's not the career you have, but the knowledge you have in your skull!"

"Oh yeah?"

"Oh yeah!" She stared at me with intense eyes, and then spoiled it all by giggling. "I always knew who John Smith was, you know. It was just more fun to pretend that I didn't. It made Kyon make this really hilarious face!"

I raised an eyebrow, and drank my tea carefully. It wasn't like this was verging on anything like classified information, though I was worried I might slip up with my words. I'd only just travelled back to complete that mission a few weeks before, to appear as my adult self while my mission implanted past self napped on a bench.

"And, I know it has to have been you that got him there." She winked at me, and as I blinked at her in shock she fell back into her chair cackling with laughter.

"Oh, you've always been such a wet, hopelessly romantic sap regarding your Dad. The _second_ you were accepted into the agency, I knew you'd have to be involved in it somehow."

To my credit, I didn't choke on my mouthful. I just swallowed, stared, then gaped. I felt pretty stupid as Mum folded her arms and raised her chin, a superior and mocking grin spreading across her face.

"Told you! I'm _so_ the smarter one."

Once I recovered I sipped my tea and shrugged as nonchalantly as I could manage. "Well, I'm only eighteen. My brain still has a few years to grow. And you still haven't managed to distract me from the most important part of this. If we're just breaking into East Junior, why do Aunt Yuki and Uncle Itsuki need to work so hard? I mean, it's not as if there's security around the place..."

I trailed off. I'd expected her to interject and cockily reveal her dastardly plans, but instead her face had turned a little pale. "I haven't told them to do anything," she said. "Did they say I had?"

"No, only that they had some things to do in preparation for Tanabata and..."

Being in the S.O.S Brigade together for nearly three years and living together for far more meant that not only did we both notice that something was up, but that we worked nearly seamlessly as a team. My mobile was out of my pocket smoothly, and as I was dialling Aunt Yuki and Uncle Itsuki's phone numbers Mum was on the landline checking in with their workplaces and apartments. It only took us five minutes to realise that they had quite suddenly and inexplicably dropped out of all contact. Not at work, not at home, not visible through their windows when we gave up feeling stunned and went to sneak into their buildings and lurk around in their streets with binoculars. It wasn't until I thought to call Tsuruya – who sadly said she couldn't be of any help today and had no idea – that my wristwatch and communicator were pinged by the agency.

Mum crowded in beside me on the footpath, and in the humid summer afternoon we read the message together.

_Classified information prevents full disclosure, but Nagato and Koizumi will resurface. Proceed with current leave as intended, and don't forget to be back Monday 0800 sharp. Do not investigate further, that is an order._

Mum pouted, kicked at the pole of a street sign and stormed on down the path ahead of me, towards our home.

"Are they always such... pricks?"

I had to hustle to keep up, stubbing my toes occasionally. "Sometimes. But I understand. It's hard to be nice and maintain time-plane coherence. I've had to do it to my past self as well. Remember some of the strange things I did as Mikuru? A lot of them were because I've been sent back a few times this year to do various things... when our paths cross I've had to issue orders and warnings to myself."

Mum stopped in her tracks. I nearly ran into the back of her. She raised a hand and gave me a cold look. "So you're saying this could be you, from the future, doing something with _our_ Yuki and Itsuki?"

I shrugged. "There's other agents than me, though. I think we're kept unaware of each other's identities due to secrecy concerns. It's like the message said, _classified information_. I'm probably never going to find out some things."

Mum cracked her knuckles ominously and glared up into the sky in a way that left it absolutely clear. If anything happened to Aunt Yuki or Uncle Itsuki, there would be hell to pay. I had to admit that I wasn't feeling very pleased with my superiors myself.

"We... need beefsteak." Mum said decisively. She grabbed my by the forearm and began dragging me along the street in a different direction then, towards the local shops and restaurants.

"Huh?" If I'd been having trouble keeping pace with her before, now it was nearly impossible. I felt like I was falling horizontally, weighted down by the grip of her fingers around my arm.

"Something's going to happen on Tanabata, I'm sure of it! And since we can't do anything else, we're going to damn well get our energy and strength reserves up! And then we'll get ready for it. Weapons, kevlar, whatever the situation might be, we'll be there, ready to take on the whole fucking world!"

I shivered, but managed not to scream as we took a corner far too quickly. "I-I'm not sure that's at all necessary. It's probably nothing at all-"

I cut myself off and held my breath as Mum rounded on me, eyes glinting with fury and purpose.

"B-beefsteak is good." I squeaked out in terror.

"Good. Let's go then."

There was an elation in the desperate energy within Mum. It was like the slow sadness in her from earlier in the day had been burnt away, like she had been reborn. Into madness, yes. But joyful madness. And at least I'd had nineteen years to get used to it.


	10. Chapter 10

**2005, North Senior High School, Tokyo**

I don't feel the need to write much more about my time within high school right now. Not only has my father now narrated the more significant parts within his own books, but in some ways I feel his perspective is more suited to those stories. I have been recursive and interfered with my own time-plane; the whole story cannot be told completely or in any sensible way from my perspective. I know that I am not completely informed about some issues, and at other times I have simply been unconscious.

We all suffered at the hands of Haruhi Suzumiya and spent more than a small amount of time on damage control and restoring stability to time, space and the universe itself. Suffice it to say that what with one thing and another, two years passed.

It was my final year of high school, and I had settled down into my location and social network. Though my only contact with home was through Nagato and Aunt Yuki's short periods of synchronisation, and the duration of my kidnapping at the hands of Fujiwara (and subsequent debriefing at the agency), I did not feel lonely or alone.

We had lived in a strange sort of truce alongside our rival dopplegangers, Sasaki, Tachibana, Suou and Fujiwara. At first Nagato had us all worried; we had our direct parallels with these rival agencies and agents, and we had butted heads over the methods of resolution during our first few altercations. But we had soon realised and agreed that in order to maintain a safe and workable middle-ground in our daily lives there had to be a truce. Keeping Suzumiya occupied and Kyon under observation stood in all of our best interests. We became very good at working professionally together to fabricate incidents, but there were always exceptions (like my being kidnapped, where they had been calling the shots) and conflicts (we learnt to never let Nagato and Suou engage in a direct data transfer) to keep us on our toes. We kept our contact and involvement with each other to a strict minimum, and everyone was happy with that.

So when Koizumi ducked into my classroom during recess one day asking for a private moment, I suffered and smiled and blushed through Tsuruya's teasing to sneak away with him into a secluded corner of the courtyard.

"Sasaki called last night." I could tell from the tension in his jaw and the way his fingers fidgeted nervously that this was anything but a routine contact between our two groups.

"Oh?"

"She has said... that all bets are off. All..." Koizumi shivered, his usually smiling face contorted as he pushed the words out, "She said that this is an end to our truce. She's going to call Kyon directly tonight and ask him out for a coffee. I think she's going to try to make him team up with them instead of us."

I frowned, torn between my duties and consoling a very shaken friend. I quickly checked my communication interface just in case I had any updates or notices from the agency. There was nothing. I lay a gently hand on Koizumi's shoulder, and smiled weakly.

"I assume you have already told Nagato."

He nodded. I bit my lip and scuffed my shoes against the ground.

"Well I'll check in with my superiors, but I'm not sure how much I can do, anymore. I've been warned that my extraction might come any day now. I might not even be allowed to graduate."

Koizumi sucked in a long breath and looked away from me, towards the smoggy sky.

"They aren't telling me anything, but something's up at the organisation, too. Lots of quiet and slowness... it's almost like they're so busy keeping secrets that they don't have the energy to fake normalcy. There have been coups and messes in the bureaucracy before, but they've always at least made the effort to pretend it's business as usual. Now, there's just... all these doors, closing in my face."

"Well we do know that it ends well for us, at least. Right? It can't be that bad."

It was a pretty bad idea, trying to console Koizumi when I was stressed and scared myself. It wasn't really all right. At some point something awful was going to happen to Kyon, and he was our friend now. I may have never had a father, but I did have Kyon. He was maybe more like... a brother or a cousin. Family, and one of the closest friends I had. I'd never truly integrated into the other schools I had attended. I had never had real friends. I was sad just thinking of returning to a future that didn't have any space for Kyon.

Koizumi gave me a look that left it quite clear he could see right through me. He forced a hollow smile onto his own face and shrugged. "Well, even if it is, it's out of our hands. Nagato said that even checking in with the IDSE and poking around in the data down here was useless to her. She's had some blocks applied remotely, and can't synchronise with any future selves. Or alter data here herself. So if something does happen, we can't..."

I gasped. "This... isn't good. Not good at all."

There wasn't much we could do. The bell rang, and we hurried back to our classrooms. I spent the whole afternoon at my desk trying to ping the agency, using specific and general and emergency codes to try and get through. I even tried Miss Miruku's personal phone number. No response. Just the same default message came back from them all, a pre-set phrase only sent out in times of severe danger and flux: _Remain calm and take no action, we shall contact with mission updates soon_. The only information I had from that was that it was not yet at the point of emergency recall.

We were shaken. Suzumiya and Kyon didn't show up to the clubroom, and so Nagato, Koizumi and I simply sat and regarded each other. It felt like a parting of ways, and I think we all wanted to memorise each other's faces. We didn't speak for quite some time.

"I am concerned that I have been misleadingly useful before this point in time," Nagato said dully, "and now you have become too reliant upon my abilities. We should as a group have located resources less subjective to external influences."

I could guess at the frustration she was feeling, the guilt. Nagato's abilities had become the crux of many of our schemes and plans, and all too soon, before we had even found the final direction of our conspiracy to save Kyon, we had been crippled. We had entered the endgame blindly and without any tools that could be used to our advantage.

"We've all been too complacent, and it's hardly your fault that none of us thought to have a backup of your skills. If anything, my reliance upon your capabilities is something I've brought with me from my early childhood. I've been the one to assume and take things for granted. I should have been assessing this mission more objectively."

Koizumi rested his head in his hands and sighed heavily. There was no trace now of his usual smile. "If anything, it's me. I... last week, with Suzumiya, I..."

My head jerked up, eyes wide. "You what, Koizumi? What happened?"

Koizumi's voice was broken and cracking as he answered. "I couldn't control myself. I could see all my hopes spiralling away, and I was wondering if maybe, maybe... there might not be a place for me in Suzumiya's heart, but I could still steal a moment before everything became set in stone. With her and Kyon..."

"You made a move on _Suzumiya_?" I asked incredulously.

Koizumi shook his head. "No. I just wanted to tell her, while I still could. I didn't get the words out, of course. Coward. But what if my distraction, and the way I've been behaving around her, has led to this?"

I wasn't about to let him wallow or escape a full explanation that easily. "Koizumi," I phrased it as politely as I could, "if you didn't tell her anything, what _did_ happen?"

Nagato nodded her agreement. "I would also like to know."

Koizumi fidgeted for a second before replying. He seemed fragile and young and raw. "I, uh... Kyon. Kyon punched me."

I tried to bite back the smile that fought its way to my lips, ducking my head to the side. Nagato was her usual staid self. I tried to recover myself so that I could reply.

"I... see. Koizumi, given all the emotion and violence and drama we've seen during our activities... one punch is hardly anything at all."

I did want to reassure him. Though we all knew that things were cascading to something big and catastrophic, it was so unlikely that Kyon's frustration would be the trigger for it all. If anything, another conflict like this – and oh there had been so many over the years – that forced Kyon to recognise his feelings for and devotion to Suzumiya was more likely to stabilise everything.

I could see in Koizumi's eyes that he knew that, but there was this doubt and fear and guilt anyway. No more than was in my own gut, probably no more than was in Nagato's own complex mind.

"There is, in conclusion, nothing that our group can currently do."

Nagato's words were cold and true.

"And," I added, "we're all pretty impotent as independent entities as well. This game... is beyond us. I can only hope that Sasaki's group know what they're doing."

Nagato nodded. "I shall attempt to find a loophole within the restrictions placed on myself. You will be notified if I have any success."

In an emergency situation like the one suggested by the answering machines at the agency, there was only one setting that would work on the TPDD, and it would take me right back to the safe-room at the agency. I couldn't set any times or destinations. I couldn't access any information beyond what I already had stored. I could only hope that others – both those nearby and in the future – could achieve something.

"I will... make some tea."

Koizumi clasped my shoulder sympathetically. Nagato declined the drink and settled down into a chair in the corner of the room to get on with her work. She held a book in her lap for appearance's sake, and turned the pages mechanically. She had presumably set her biological self on auto-pilot. I filled the electric thermos with fresh water and sat beside the improvised kitchenette that we had set up.

It seemed strange. The world was falling apart around us, in an unpredicted and confusing way. It was happening at a fast speed that could quite possibly change the universe, and yet the afternoon felt and sounded like any other. The breeze still bumped hanging streamers against the edges of the open window, and cars could still be heard driving past the school outside. The clubrooms around us reverberated with voices and energy.

The door handle clicked and turned, and as if it was any other day Kyon simply walked into the clubroom. He set his bag down on the desk, his eyes going straight to Suzumiya's unoccupied seat before he greeted us.

"Hi, Miss Nagato, Miss Asahina." He very pointedly ignored Koizumi.

I offered him a cup of tea. Nagato turned a page, and muttered something barely audible. Kyon seemed dazed, and didn't react at all. He didn't say a word when I set his cup down before him, but kept staring at Suzumiya's empty chair.

"Are you all right, Kyon?"

He blinked and his eyes seemed to focus. He turned his head and smiled apologetically at me. There was something... off in his gaze, something changed inside him. I couldn't really explain it or even comprehend it fully. Though he always enjoyed drinking the tea that I made, he left this cup untouched. He looked to the window, then back at me, and there was something fragile about him that reminded me of how Koizumi had behaved not ten minutes before. When he'd done that for a few seconds, back and forth, his attention seemed to truly fall on me. His face was touched by a gentle and calm smile as he spoke.

"All right? Yes, thank you, I am. Haruhi's not here yet?"

"Ah, no. And actually, there's something I need to talk to you about..." I didn't know why I was saying it, why I was so worried, so certain that my time was up when at any time there might have come a message cancelling the emergency situation and restoring me to my usual mission status.

"There is?"

I could feel this sense of finality. Like I had already lost my friends, and the only experiences of my biological father that I ever had. Even with the creepy lecherous moments and the discomfort I felt while wearing Suzumiya's cosplay outfits, I had gained something during my undercover mission that I wasn't ready to let go of. I felt stupid and heartbroken and desperate all at once. I knew exactly how Koizumi felt inside. I reached across the table with my hands, but stopped just short of touching him.

"Things are happening."

Kyon rolled his eyes. "Yeah, you could say that." He laughed softly, and I could tell that he had not understood the weight of my statement.

"No, _things_. I believe that once they are resolved – sometime within the next twenty-four hours – I will be recalled to my original time-plane."

He took hold of my hands, then. Our eyes met, and his smile faded into a pained expression. "A-are you sure, Asahina?"

"I'm sure. I'm so sorry. I know it's wrong to get emotionally involved during assignments, but you're just so..." my chest hurt with it. My words were coming out like hiccups, in bursts and gasps between tears. "... so wonderful, and I can't bear to just go, and..."

I had cried a lot in my life. I had cried into my Mum's arms, and Uncle Itsuki's, Aunt Yuki's, but I had never felt the warm protective embrace of my father before. Even though Kyon could not have possibly known who I was, the way he rose from his seat and walked around the table; the way he wrapped me tight in his arms and held me close to his chest felt like the true embrace of a parent. He smoothed my hair down, and just let me cling to him as I cried.

When he spoke, he sounded just as choked up and weepy as I did. "No, _you're_ the wonderful one, really, and I'll miss you so, so much. We all will, you know. But we'll catch up to you. _I'll_ catch up to you, Mikuru."

I sniffled and forgot myself in the emotion of the moment. "...and you're my best friends, and my family, and I _love_ you, and..."

Kyon was holding me tight in his arms, a hand on my head, his voice warm and soothing and protective and kind. So innocent and generous and wonderful, my father. By that point I had absolved myself of all liability for the things that were shaking up the fabric of time and space, taking one last moment to say goodbye before I accepted my fate and evacuated myself back to the agency.

But in one breath, one second, the door to the S.O.S Brigade clubroom opened to admit Suzumiya, whose smile froze on her face as Kyon held me tight – oh like a father, or a brother, damnit! - and said "I love you" to exactly the wrong girl.

Then, just as quickly, Suzumiya was gone. Kyon was pulling away from me and running down the hallway after her. I was standing, tear-stained and bereft in the clubroom. Nagato was somewhere in her own head, Koizumi was brushing past me to head through the door himself and I could not reach anyone or anything.

I should have just used the TPDD then, but I was feeling perverse and bloody-minded. I returned to my apartment and packed up my belongings. I destroyed all hardcopies of my mission data and called Tsuruya. Without any questions at all, she and her mother helped me to clear out my apartment. We vacuumed floors and scrubbed clean sinks and dropped the keys in at the maintenance office in the lobby. I was a little too far gone to feel anything anymore, in shock. Was this a paradox? Was this predetermination or luck or just bad judgement? If only I could use my TPDD normally and go back to fix my mistake...

But I could not. I could only smile thinly and thank Tsuruya's family for their hospitality. I knew that I had to get out of the time-plane. I was not suitable for active or inactive duty. Why was I still holding on? I had no hope of fixing anything, but I felt too overwhelmed and confused and surprised by it all. I couldn't summon the energy needed to activate my get-out-of-dodge-free pass.

To her credit, Tsuruya said nothing. Always to her credit. She had been so good to me. Never questioning when I was looping back on myself or needing to hide out. Her home was always available to me, like it had been from the first day I had been inducted into the agency.

My breath caught, and for a moment I was too occupied remembering the details of that day to feel awful about the problems I currently faced. It was so obvious, and I'd somehow missed it all along! I was not only Mikuru, but another more terrible anagram. Mizuyasu Miruku was nothing more than Suzumiya Kurumi.

"I owe you more than I know" I confessed to Tsuruya, though she did not hear me. She had found sleep easily that night – it must have had something to do with how active she was during the daytime – and simply rolled over in bed. I sat up on my elbows to watch her, smiling sadly.

"I don't know how long it will be in your chronology before we meet again, or mine, but however much or little time it takes, I'm going to miss you."

After that I lay back in the dark. As my guilt and culpability and responsibility for the current disaster bled back into my mind, I realised I was trapped in hell. Until the sun rose, I felt the blame and inevitability of my bad choices ache inside my body, mind and soul. If only I'd chosen a different word. If only I hadn't been such a wet blanket. If only I'd been self-aware enough to see it coming.

Like a broken record I showed up at school the next day. Instead of my classroom, I headed right for the S.O.S Brigade clubroom. Suzumiya was there already, but nobody else was.

"Ah, good morning."

Distracted and not at all angry like I'd expected her to be, Suzumiya looked across the table at me. "Ah. Morning, Mikuru."

We sat in silence and the moment dragged out. The minutes. Then the hours. The bell rang to mark the passage of classes and breaks, and we could hear the murmurs of students in the hallways on the lower floors. It was a long time before Suzumiya spoke.

"Have you seen Kyon?"

"I-" my brain caught up to me as I started answering, and I realised that her question made no sense to me at all. "No. Not since yesterday, when he ran off after you. I didn't see him at all last night, if that's what you mean."

Suzumiya frowned. She looked a little queasy, a little pale around the edges. "He... never caught up with me. I-"

At just the wrong moment, my TPDD and wristwatch beeped in concert. I laughed nervously and patted my pocket. "I've been waiting for a call, um, from my parents. I'd better take it."

Suzumiya nodded, and though she seemed a thousand miles away from caring either way she waved farewell as I shut the door behind myself. There was nobody in sight in the corridor, so I checked my messages. As I had expected, it was an immediate recall. With one last glance back at the clubroom door, I grasped the TPDD in both hands and twisted until I felt the sickening crunch of the emergency recall activation resonate in my bones.


	11. Chapter 11

**2025 (January 4th), Nagato Residence, Tokyo; 2025 (January 4th), Suzumiya Residence, Tokyo**

"It doesn't make any sense!" Uncle Itsuki slammed his cup down on the table and stared at the list of known agents and activities that we had compiled.

Uncle Itsuki and Aunt Yuki and I had no secrets from Mum – well, save for the ones about real aliens and ESPers – but we had arranged for a private meeting of our old co-conspirators so that we could discuss the devolution of our shared mission and failure with out new perspectives. Neither Aunt Yuki nor Uncle Itsuki could contact Sasaki's rival group – or had been able to since that day in 2005 – and my return had inspired us to re-open what had previously been a pretty cold case. Maybe they had simply been courteous, waiting until I was old enough and aware enough to once more collaborate with them.

"No, it does not." Aunt Yuki agreed. "Despite our certainty that events were quite serious at the time, there is nowhere near enough data to confirm that there was any danger to space-time or the targets Suzumiya and Kyon."

I frowned, nodding, as I read over the dates and times in our lists. Something was... off about it all. Something big, that was obvious and at the same time out of reach. Something that I should have _known._

"Hang on, if we were at high school during this time-plane, between 2003-5 C.E., then there's no way that Mum was born in the seventies. The birth year for someone of high-school age would have been 1987 or thereabouts. But that means that when I was born, in 2006 C.E..."

I blinked. Had I really been so stupid, for so long? How had I not put together my own birth-date with that of my mission description?

"Your mother," Aunt Yuki explained while avoiding my eyes, "did not want to be identified as a pregnant teenager. The remaining members of the S.O.S Brigade helped her falsify her personal documents and raise money for the necessities involved in raising a child. My personal duty was to also mentally condition your infant self so that you would not ask intrusive or awkward questions regarding her age in public."

I boggled at that. "So you... brainwashed me."

"_Mentally conditioned_. I simply engaged in structured memory modifying dialogues with you, to prevent any confusion or social stigma that might have been associated with your mother's socio-economic status and life choices."

I couldn't stop staring at her. "But, but you're a being comprised of pure data and logic, Aunt Yuki! Why the hell isn't _Unplanned Pregnancy_ in our list of big things that happened in the leadup to the cascade failure? If everything revolves around Mum and her abilities, there's no way that wasn't a factor."

Aunt Yuki looked at me carefully, and with a quick nod she made a note in the event chronology just one week before the known catastrophe. We stared down at the paper before us, as if somehow now everything might make sense. I had thought back then that Suzumiya's behaviour after my, ahem, moment with Kyon was a little odd. But if she'd been in a committed or secret relationship with him, it almost made sense. Almost. My mother was the jealous type. No way would she have taken it so easily.

It didn't make sense. "And how could all this stuff be happening, and the IDSE _and_ the agency _and_ the organisation all not debrief us? I mean, surely one of us should have found some information somewhere that gives us some insight. It's in this time-plane's history now, we can't have just lost all that data, and..."

Uncle Itsuki wrapped a warm arm around me and I fell silent. He messed my hair up a little and smiled kindly at me. "And trying to deal with unknown, inestimable aspects of a very big problem won't help. We just have to break it down and work through this logically. My kooky dear, you're too used to everything happening all at once. But we're in linear time with this one. It's over, happened, done, resolved, and there's no rush or immediate danger. I'm sorry if my frustration is rubbing off on you, kiddo."

I wanted to pout. To kick my feet into the legs of the table and just yell at the room until things were fixed. But I had been taught to behave better, calmer, from my Aunt and Uncle – though certainly never my mother – and my training had embedded the importance for rational behaviour deep in my skull.

"All right. We start with what we know. So how many closed spaces and other incidents has Mum managed to cause since I left?"

Uncle Itsuki laughed, coughed, and held a hand out towards Aunt Yuki. "You'd better take this one, my dear android friend."

"Eight." Aunt Yuki said, with a small smile. "One for each day of the first week following Kyon's disappearance, and one more while she was in labour giving birth to you."

"Sorry, what? B-but she was making at least two, three a week on average each year, even when things were quiet... why on earth... could this be related to it at all?"

Aunt Yuki placed a consoling hand on my shoulder. "That cannot be the case. Haruhi spoke to us of her awe of life and love, and committed very early on in her pregnancy to raising you into a wonderful adult who would be, I quote, '_So goddamn special that the world will bow down before her.'_"

"I... I can't say I know what to make of that..."

Uncle Itsuki nodded thoughtfully. "Our theory is that – and remember you went back last week for the fairy-tale hint dropping – when Haruhi is loving and feeling loved and important she becomes... stable, for want of a better word. We saw it manifest with Kyon: an intimate encounter stabilised her patterns of destruction while disruptions and jealousy triggered them. When she realised the relationship she would have with a child of her own, Haruhi must have recognised a connection with and responsibility for another human being that transcended her depression and boredom."

I wasn't sure whether to be awed or disgusted by that thought. Just by being innately me – some DNA unlucky enough to have taken root inside my mother – I had become maybe the greatest chance the entire universe had at continued survival? That was just... impossible, right? No way could someone be that important in the scheme of existence and not realise it.

"Right?"

Without my having said any of it, Aunt Yuki and Uncle Itsuki seemed to know just what I meant from the hysteria in my voice.

"Do not try to think about the universe. Even your augmented wetware does not have a fast enough processor to handle the concept. It will only confuse you."

Strangely enough Aunt Yuki's form of counselling really did help. I found myself breathing easier and nodding down at the papers we had before us.

"All right. Let's make sure I don't die anytime soon, then, in case it so happens to rip a hole in time and space. But while I'm not dying horribly, let's get to work. I think I'm really ready now."

Though we had spent the entire afternoon compiling our shared knowledge and checking things up against Aunt Yuki's books and online history databases, we had absolutely nothing at the end of the day. I shut the book I was scanning over with a sigh of disgust and lay down with a puff of air on one of the cushions on the floor. It was warm inside the apartment block, though it was wintry and cool outside the window. It hadn't been long at all in my personal linearity since the trauma and shock of my abrupt mission termination. It was quite obvious to us all that I was becoming mentally exhausted far sooner than I normally would, and certainly sooner than Aunt Yuki and Uncle Itsuki were.

Uncle Itsuki piled his book on top of mine and tidied them back onto the shelves against the wall. "Haruhi should be back from the studio by now, why don't we walk you home and all have dinner there?"

Aunt Yuki's apartment was only a few block from my house, but it was chilly and dark enough outside that I would welcome the company. "Sure."

As we huddled into our coats against the weather and walked briskly down the footpaths, my mind drifted back to how odd it all was. Imagine it... a Haruhi Suzumiya who didn't have nightmares and who didn't want to destroy or improve the world. A Haruhi – a mother – who was so content with nothing more special than the existence of one girl in the world that she didn't want anything to change. It seemed... strangely dissociative. I had missed my Mum while I'd been away, but to learn that her love for me, no matter how twistedly deranged and abusive, was large and strong enough to override any other concerns in her heart was humbling.

I couldn't imagine ever feeling that way about anyone. Emotions that intense would probably overload my mental implants and melt down my entire body. One human was surely too small to contain something that big.

Of course, Mum had never seemed entirely normal or sane or human to anyone. So there was that, at least, to take into consideration and...

I gasped. I stopped in the middle of the footpath and shouted out to my Aunt and Uncle and co-conspirators of the S.O.S Brigade. "I'm her _daughter!_"

"Yes." Aunt Yuki said. "But that is hardly recent information."

"No, no no no!" I rushed along to catch up to them, wrapped my arms around both of their waists – something I'd always been too short do to when I was a child, something I'd always wanted to – and asked the most intelligent question anyone had asked all day.

"How many closed spaces have _I _generated?"

Uncle Itsuki stumbled and looked at me, puzzled. "You? But Haruhi's the one who... oh. Oh. I see. Yes, that's a _very_ interesting question."

Aunt Yuki obviously still lacked some insight into human nature and inflection. She tilted her head and turned to face both of us, her feet falling regularly on the concrete. "Explain."

"Kurumi here has anticipated the question we should have been asking ourselves all this time, Yuki! If she's Haruhi's daughter, Kyon's daughter, then why hasn't she ever made any closed spaces?"

Aunt Yuki gave us a blank look and turned her eyes back towards the road. "We have observed and collected data since before Kurumi's birth. She – you – never showed any signs of that type of activity. There are no closed spaces because you could not make them."

"And that's it! Maybe it's not because she _could not _make them, but because she_ did_ not make them. Think about Sasaki, and Kyon, and all the others we've found of their type. The inactive elements, who-"

Uncle Itsuki turned to smile down at me apologetically. "We did detect minor activity from Kyon, when we read back over Yuki's data recordings from Haruhi's active period. Sorry we forgot to mention that, it's in the piles of notes somewhere."

I would have felt upset, but I knew better. It wasn't that bad. Uncle Itsuki had simply assumed that by reforming our group I was up-to-date on the better part of two decade's worth of observation and research. In a way, it was a very big compliment. And irrespective of that the excitement of sharing knowledge with like minds and finally, _finally_ having something to work on and from was exhilarating. This was much better than the helpless and out-of-control feeling that had sat heavy and solid and painfully in my gut since my last big mission.

"I will analyse relevant data immediately." Aunt Yuki said, interrupting my own thoughts. "We should also take biological samples."

"I'll ask the agency if we can have some lab-time, will that help?"

Aunt Yuki nodded, and we all walked the last few metres to my house in companionable silence. I think we all wanted to leave off for the night where we were: we had a direction to move in, and hopefully a lead to help us understand our own circumstances better. I think we were all a little scared that if we thought too hard, looked too closely, we'd notice something obvious that would throw us right back into the middle of the confusion and perplexed embafflement we'd been stuck in.

Mum was at home, with all the lights in the house on and a burning smoky smell coming from the kitchen. While Aunt Yuki moved quickly and efficiently to prevent any real danger or crisis, I flopped down into a chair beside Uncle Itsuki.

"I never really got to talk to you, after I came home," I began, "about my mission. My words, their effect on you..."

My voice choked in my throat. In the end, with Aunt Yuki's synchronisation with Nagato and Suzumiya's familiar madness it had been the young Koizumi who was most strange to me. He had carried this core of loneliness and sadness that my loving Uncle had never shown me. Right to the end, that lingering heartache. Nothing I had said or done could help him, and I'd had more than a few sleepless nights over that myself.

Uncle Itsuki smiled, nodded his head, and patted me on the shoulder as if _I_ was the one who needed consoling. "There's not much to say, sweetheart. You're still young, you'll learn in time."

"Learn what?"

Uncle Itsuki looked wistfully towards the smoke that billowed out from the kitchen door, before pressing a warm dry kiss against my forehead. "Sometimes love is unrequited, and sometimes people get lonely in life, but that not necessarily a bad thing."

I didn't like it at all. He was right. I'd probably need a lot of time to come to accept an idea like that. "I still don't like that you've had all that pain inside you, all these years..."

But Uncle Itsuki was having none of that. He pinched my chin between two of his fingers and tugged until my eyes met his.

"Munchkin, I'm not in pain. At all. I'm surrounded by the people that I love most in this entire world, and I am the happiest I could possibly be. Apart from missing one old friend, I have everything I want. And... you were right. What you said back then, that first night. It helped me."

I blinked. I couldn't remember that evening very well at all. "What did I say?"

"That I'd never lose you. Even when everything was over and the world was settling down again, I wasn't re-assigned by the organisation or erased or anything like that. So I get to spend my life with my favourite girls -" he looked up and waved his fingers at Aunt Yuki as she brought a bowl of salad into the room, "_all_ of them."

Mum came bustling into the room with a pile of one of her victory dishes: savoury pancakes that were stuffed in the middle, shaped like UFOs and decorated with little sauce windows and guns and aliens. It was one of those things that she only made for fun, only when she'd had a very successful taping, and could blackmail the rest of us into doing the wash-up for her.

"It's a great show tonight!" She boasted, slamming the serving dish down in a way that should have upset the contents more than it did. "You will not believe how awesome my subject matter was today!"

Without any warning, she turned the telly on and pressed play. "You guys were lazy, so I had to tape it for you and everything, but that just means I get to re-watch how awesome I am! I bet even you'll get confused today, Yuki, it's pretty full on!"

The mysterious synthetic warbling theme music of my Mum's show began and with a small amount of eye-rolling and laughter Uncle Itsuki started helping Aunt yuki serve the food up. I would normally have helped, but my eyes were glued to the face of the special guest for the week. While the guests were usually completely insane UFO fans or new-age spiritualist theorists and nutjobs that Mum went on to disprove and debunk, this man was... younger than usual, and with none of the mad fervour that usually possessed interviewees. He was familiar. I _knew_ his face. He was what, only a kid, all things considered. Maybe four or five years older than me.

Then, on the screen, Mum's voice burst out shrilly with enthusiasm. "Time-Plane Destroyed! This young man here appears to have drafted equations that would make it possible for a mechanical device to manipulate time and space! Yes, that's what I'm saying folks... time travel! A new frontier that we've never breached before on this program! Science is finally catching up with Science Fiction, and I'm here to show you how... Or, am I!"

Mum waggled her eyebrows at the camera, and thrust out an energetic arm towards the young man. He looked awkward and a little embarrassed. Mum gave a bit of an intro to the guy's personal background before the first eye-catch of the show. Right up there in bright fluorescent English letters were the words _Time Plane Destroid Device._

My hand went reflexively to my pocket, to the TPDD that I kept concealed there. I was sure that I was turning completely pale. Mum didn't notice; she was shovelling down her food and rolling her eyes at the screen.

"I told them how to spell '_destroyed'_ properly, but I swear someone in the Effects department must have a hard-on for incorrect English. Though it is a great name, now that I think about it. Time-Plane Destroid Device. TPDD. I bet the real time-travel device you use is better than that, right Kurumi?"

I blinked and looked up at her. "Wha- I mean, what?"

Mum sighed and waved her chopsticks at me. "Eat, eat! You're skinny enough as it is, brat! Any minute now those huge breasts of yours are going to snap your spine in two!" She grinned happily at me. "Your time-travel gear. This kid, his equations, it's all nonsense. Complete and utter bullshit. I mean, it's just _bad math_, even I could tell that. But what a hilarious thought to have! You're sitting here, a real time-traveller with technology from a distant future, and here I am participating in the debates and challenges as Time Travel research gets kicked off. Oh, it's so titillating!"

"Ah Mum, I'm not sure that word is..."

Mum stabbed one chopstick down into her pancake, eyes wild. There would be no contradicting her, I realised.

"Titillating! Scintillating. Fascinating. We're on the precipice of innovation and real, actual thought here! It's taken the human race long enough, I say!"

"Indeed." Aunt Yuki was cutting her food up into regular sized shapes. When I looked towards him, Uncle Itsuki suddenly had a mouth full of food, chewing industriously.

"In fact," Aunt Yuki continued, "that ties in to that question we considered on the way over here."

My fingers curled protectively around the TPDD, and I winced as Mum opened her mouth to whine at us.

"You guys were talking about time travel without me? Come on, divulge your dastardly secrets, you fiends!"

"Oh, um, we were just wondering how long it would be until the technology I use for my work would be developed. Even if this guy is wrong, like you said, it's getting closer every day."

She seemed happy enough with that, and the rest of the night passed quickly with Mum heckling herself on the telly screen and Uncle Itsuki smiling inanely as he scrubbed the frypan clean.

Though we didn't _have_ to maintain secrecy from my mother, we had developed the habit of discretion. We also weren't really sure if we wanted to spend the sheer amount of time that it would take to explain and answer her questions. More than that, there was the huge question to be answered: why didn't I make closed spaces? If my mission documentation had been right all those years ago, then why didn't Kyon? Did it have something to do with the fact that Kyon had a younger sister; was it like Aunt Yuki and Uncle Itsuki said, all related to a sense of guardianship and love? Or was it genetics? Was there something in Kyon's DNA that somehow suppressed or contained the energy?

Mum was way too busy watching herself, and in any case I had Uncle Itsuki perfectly able to cover for me. I set aside my half-finished dinner and leaned towards Aunt Yuki, holding my TPDD out to her.

Aunt Yuki looked up at me blankly.

"I was wondering, ah, um, that is, what this was made of?"

Aunt Yuki didn't even need a second to perform her analysis and reply. "Polycarbonate, rubber, and metal."

I frowned. That didn't sound like the silicone based technology of our timeline, nor the wetware of the future. Leaning even closer still, I whispered to her, "Can you be any more specific for me? Please?"

Aunt Yuki stared at me for a long few seconds, and then from a pocket of her jacket produced a piece of paper upon which she sketched very detailed schematics of the TPDD.

Well, I say _detailed_, but there was not very much detail to be had at all. The TPDD was basically a hollow polycarbonate plastic shell, with one metal spring and several stretched rubber bands and strips inside. I could see how the thing was designed, right down to the tiny e-ink based display, which was little more than a thin film pasted to the outside. There was no... no mechanism, no technology involved. It looked like little more than one of the cheap toys I had come across in late middle school, in 5011, than any real time-travel devices.

I... wasn't quite ready to admit to myself the implications of that realisation. If there was nothing in my TPDD, then the energy and ability to travel through time had come from...

My brain just wasn't ready for that knowledge. I shivered where I sat, which wasn't uncommon in my house or near my mother. But for the first time, it had very little to do with the mad plans she was exhorting to Uncle Itsuki, or the violent thrashing of her arms as she really got into it. I didn't even register her words. My hands holding the TPDD fell limply into my lap, and when one large fat tear splattered onto the cheap plastic – I was always a crybaby at times like this, really – I glanced up into Aunt Yuki's knowing eyes.

"I-I-I-I... can you...? I can't... can you tell Unc- I mean, K-k-koizumi about this? I can't, I..."

Aunt Yuki placed a calm strong hand over my mouth and nodded. My fear and surprise and astonished whisper appeared to have gone unnoticed, as Mum and Uncle Itsuki began to get really loud with whatever they were talking about. I didn't think there would be any need at all for us to try and look for any closed spaces or paranormal activity in my personal history; the agency had a log of all my trips back through time, presumably also stretching out into my own personal linear future. In the same way I'd felt shocked and terrified by possibilities the night I was recruited, I was shocked and terrified by an even greater possibility; that _I _was – my family was – capable of all these limitless horrors.


	12. Chapter 12

**2025, March, the agency, Tokyo; 2000 Tsuruya Residence, Tokyo; 2000 Sasaki's Residence, Tokyo; 2003, North Senior High School, Tokyo**

Nobody ever really gets enough time to rest, not really. To truly have respite you need to not only recover from your exhaustion but also have the time to build up reservoirs of energy in surplus. As it was, I was fortunate enough that I had a month to stress over our revelations before I began to take on more work. Being a time travel agent isn't really a career you can walk away from or abandon, especially when you're in it as knee-deep as I was.

I was allowed to visit home on the weekends, as I had during my childhood training. It was quite odd, however, to be living as my own teacher. To know that I had once shared the same bed and bedroom and routine as my student. The same old spluttering washing machine. That there was in my cupboard an old pair of socks that were too cute to throw out, but too small to wear; probably the same ones she tugged back up after a physical training session. We both had regular meals with what was effectively the S.O.S Brigade. Even though young Kurumi had no awareness of these things, and we were separated by approximately ten years of age (this was still early in her training, you see, before junior high) I couldn't help but see echoes of her during my time off. It was like my memories had been displaced into a kind of false present day. I could swear I heard old arguments with Mum and games of chess with Uncle Itsuki even when I was the only person at home. That our chronologies did not match (which made for some spectacularly odd lesson plan diagrams, let me tell you!) only made matters worse in some ways. I had to think about what she was studying, how old she was; I tended to remember exactly what her weekend would have been like.

I was legally an adult, I thought to myself. The agency had arranged for me to sit a make-up high school graduation exam, too. I had officially graduated and become a full-time time travel agent. Perhaps it was time to move out, to find somewhere fresh to live? To have a home that wasn't an agency rental or Mum's, but my own?

Perhaps it might have been the right time, I sighed sadly, but I had too much responsibility and selflessness trained into me. I had to do right not only by myself and my needs, but by the needs of the Ideal Timeline. As Aunt Yuki and Uncle Itsuki and I all agreed on the matter of closed spaces and motherly love, I could not ethically move out until I had either confirmed our suspicions regarding my own capabilities or until Mum seemed a little less attached to the reformation of the S.O.S Brigade.

It was ludicrous and hard to explain, but now that I was Mikuru returned in her eyes, her perception of our improvised family group had changed. She didn't just want Aunt Yuki and Uncle Itsuki to help her research the topics for her show; she wanted us all as her co-hosts. Special sub-topics given to each member of the brigade, and everyone assembling under Mum, the obvious leader. And when she said "obvious" it was without any speck of humility or irony, she truly did believe this all in her heart.

With all this on my shoulders, you can imagine that I never really got the respite I needed following my failed mission. While I was not going to become an implanted agent for a long time, however, times were tight and I was still listed as On Active Duty. Facing the choice of undertaking errands for the agency or being press-ganged into becoming a "believe it or not!" TV host's underling, you can imagine what I chose. I at least knew that within the duties of being a time agent there was always the emergency recall option, and that the emergency rooms did contain a thermos of tea.

That I had brewed. Which was, in a way, quite creepy. But there was a roster for refilling and attending to the emergency rooms, and as long as I didn't think too much about what I was doing, that job had the comfort of predictability. Cold tea goes out, hot tea brews and goes in. First-aid kit is checked and replenished, towels are washed and folded. You couldn't get much safer than something like that.

I did have minor concerns, of course. What if I agreed to travel in time and space? Since my epiphany regarding the TPDD and my own abilities, I hadn't tried to travel in time outside of the agency headquarters, and then only for the purposes of collecting young Kurumi from home. It wasn't as if I had faced a large or unexpected jump, and I was a little scared that _if_ I was the power behind the time travel and not the TPDD, _if_ that was the reason there were so few agents, and _if_ the real control over time travel was not in the TPDD's display but my own mind, that I might unintentionally risk destroying the universe or create a large closed space.

I shivered, and shuffled my feet to stay warm in the cool early air of the morning as I waited for the bus that would take me from my house to the agency. Around me commuters and students were mainly all turned inwards, all of us contemplating the week of work ahead of us. I myself was trying to gather my resolve up, to contact the higher superiors that I had not yet met in person, to demand a more satisfactory explanation of the TPDD and the nature of time travel.

The trip in passed in a daze, and as I mounted the steps of my preposterously illogical workplace, I clenched my fists at my sides. I was dead set on storming right up to the restricted and sealed doors that I had never passed through before, so carried away by my own thoughts that I almost forgot to drop by the classroom to provide Kurumi with her task for the day. I had for whatever reason that day not been scheduled to pick her up on my way in. I set thoughts about the whys for that aside, and set my things out on my desk.

"Good morning, Miss Miruku."

"Good morning, Miss Kurumi." I smoothed my skirt and with a deep breath let go of all my own concerns, opening my notebook and double-checking that I did indeed have the right lesson plan in mind. "So today, we're going to start the exercises with your TPDD. Have you brought it?"

"Ah, I think so, I... here!" Was it vain of me to think that the sight of my younger self fumbling around in her bag, face lighting up with success, was adorable? I liked to think that it was protective. I was distancing myself from, er, myself, enough that I could see her as an entirely different person. I was doing my job.

"Good, great. So the task for this week is to get you used to living slightly unpredictably. You won't always be able to know when a mission might go strange; if you'll need to stay isolated in hiding for a week, or be on a slightly different linear chronology to everyone else. Some times you will jump from night to day, or vice versa."

"I see."

I crossed my legs, and pulled out the copy of the schedule I had prepared for her. "To begin with, this will be simple. We will be engaging in a school-week schedule that is slightly dysphasic with your normal biorhythms. We'll be holding classes at night-time here, in the dark, and you'll be sleeping in the day. We start training with small and long-term changes like this, and then as you become more resilient to the interruptions to your sleep cycle, we'll eventually speed them up."

Kurumi's eyes were wide as she scanned over the schedule I handed to her.

"So to begin with today, I want you to just go back to your room and try to rest. Sometimes you'll need to try and bank up energy, or pretend to be asleep. Those meditation exercises we've done together should come in handy. I'll see you at...?"

"At, um... 21:00 tonight?"

"Well done, yes. Don't forget to eat before you show up. Meals will be on diurnal schedules, though you and I shall be operating on our own isolated one. This may also come into consideration during a mission. Remember to not only be aware of your own chronology, but that of everyone else."

Kurumi left looking happy enough. Though I could remember feeling quite unsure about the instructions, I obviously hadn't shown it visibly, and I _had_ survived that first exhausting week well enough. The worst part of teaching myself was knowing when to pretend that I had no knowledge of the feelings in my student. It was important to her sanity, of course, but in some ways this simple occupation was far more dangerous than my mission in 2003 had been. At least I hadn't had first-hand experience of the entire mission before!

Free of my duties for twelve hours, I was able to finally gather myself to confront my superiors. I bit my lip, straightened my shoulders and after confirming that young Kurumi had indeed retired to her assigned room I strode along the corridors that would deliver me to central control.

When I was in sight of the secret and secure doors that seemed to separate me from all the knowledge I needed, without any warning or explanation, entirely unexpectedly, they swung open towards me. Lit brightly from behind, I squinted to see the shapes of one old woman slightly shorter than myself and a young girl of about twelve years old.

They walked towards me, the doors shutting behind them. I found my eyes skittering away from the older woman as they approached; her long grey hair was in a bun, she still was too familiar for my tastes. I was old enough now, to not need explanation or any false identities when I met a future version of myself. She acknowledged me with a short nod and a quick grimace of a smile – exactly how I felt inside myself – before we both turned our attention to the girl.

She was, what, a year or two older than Kyon's little sister had been when I'd seen her last? Her hair was a similar colour, too, and her eyes. But the cut of it, and the knowledge in her expression... this wasn't her, was it? I _knew_ that face, at a different age. I recognised it, somehow.

"We are sorry to surprise you like this, but it is time now for two missions of great importance."

Before I had the chance to say or do anything, the girl stepped forwards and unbuttoned the simple blouse she was wearing. She opened it just enough to expose her small barely forming breasts, and the very familiar looking mole that lay there.

"Please do not hesitate today. I have had full training, though I cannot myself use the TPDD. There will be time to explain when we reach out destination." The girl's voice was determined, but pleasant and open.

It was only then that I made eye contact with my future, much older, self. Once our eyes had met, I couldn't look away. It was some morbid fascination inside me. I wanted to know why they'd come from behind the security doors, what lay beyond them at the core of the agency. Why this girl had the exact same mole as me. But more importantly that that, I wondered why... why...

"You're Sasaki, right?"

The girl laughed as if delighted, and nodded her head emphatically. "Yes! Ah finally, someone remembers me!"

"Enough. There is no time, here. You will both receive further instructions once you reach your destination. Your destination time is 0600 hours March the 11th 2000 C.E., Tsuruya residence." My older self shrugged and with a flippant humour she had presumably developed with age she waved farewell saying, "Don't be late, dears."

I took Sasaki's small and soft hand in my own, and while I held my breath I activated the TPDD.

The world twisted in and out of focus, and we were standing side-by-side in the calm and peaceful courtyard of the Tsuruya residence. Sasaki let go of my hand quickly and was scrambling towards the main building of the household, full of excitement and joy.

"I bet she'll be my age, oh wow! You can't believe what this feels like, Miss Asahina! Ah, actually, I bet you would, wouldn't you?"

I followed curiously, wondering who Sasaki was talking about. It would have made sense if she meant Tsuruya, but how could Sasaki have known that? Having seen the birthmark, I was suspicious that she was perhaps a long-lost sibling or maybe even my own future daughter. If she was calling me "Asahina", then something was off.

"Have I... met you before? Do you not know my name, Sasaki?"

Sasaki turned in the doorway and pouted, hands on her hips and her lower lip jutted out towards me. "You don't remember me after all, do you?"

I was puzzled. "Of course I do, but I won't meet you for another few years, I think, in your linearity. I mean, not until we're all in senior high."

"Oh come _on_, you can't be a time-traveller and be that stupid!" Sasaki smiled sweetly at me and gathered handfuls of her hair up, bundling it into a messy ponytail behind her head. "It's kinda hard now that I've cut it, but you've got to know who I am!"

I gaped. My mouth hung open as Sasaki grinned triumphantly at me, and as a twelve-year-old Tsuruya cried out in joy and ran towards me, calling me by name. I ignored the clamouring of "Miss Kurumi!" from beside my hip and summoned my voice to say it aloud. I... of all things, this shocked me the most.

"You're Kyon's little sister?"

Sasaki nodded her head happily. "And that's Aunt Sasaki to you, my dear niece out of time. Betcha never wondered why you had a congenital mole, but Haruhi never had one, right? Right?"

I rubbed a hand over my face, and kindly disentangled young Tsuruya's arms from around me. "Actually, no. I was too... too busy being creeped out by Kyon, er, Dad's behaviour about it all at the time. I never really thought about it."

Sasaki laughed. "Ah, Kyon, what a perverted older brother I have. It's going to be so weird this year, you know?"

"Come on you guys, everyone else is already here!" Tsuruya led us through the house with her usual exuberance, if anything more intense than ever with the energy of childhood. I suspected that very soon in my future I would be required to make another visit slightly earlier in Tsuruya's life. She very obviously was well acquainted with me already, and I began to wonder about the very nature of our easy friendship during senior high.

"Come _on!_" I succumbed to Tsuruya's eager tugging and followed her into a tidy traditional style room with a low table covered in delicate looking food and tea things. There were several young faces that were quite familiar to me, all looking with strong interest and curiosity beyond my elbow at Sasaki's face. I did not turn back to look at her, there were too many questions to be asked, and I had no idea what information these children had about myself, the agency, or any of the mess that lay ahead of them.

"I am Kurumi, and you've been introduced to Tsuruya. This is Sa-"

"Sakaki, yes. Suou Kuyou, SCD interface." A solemn faced small girl with long dark hair leaned forwards and extended her hand in a very artificial looking gesture. Despite her efforts, she seemed even less sociable than Nagato had been at the start of the S.O.S Brigade.

"It's a pleasure to meet you." Sakaki nodded and we all sat down, gathered around the table. Sakaki turned to the next in this lineup of child operatives, the lot of them looking with the tea set like a child's party playing at a spy game. I must have been, what, the mother figure? As a niece to one of the children beside me, the idea felt a little off. No, scratch that, very off. Surreal.

Sasaki smiled broadly in the face of the next child's expression. His curiosity slaked, he had retreated into a dark scowl. He was quite cute, looking as if he was trying to take his job way too seriously. It reminded me of my first mission, and I was quite glad that my family and I had all had longer to grow up before we were thrust into our roles. Even Nagato had the benefit of many years of reading and leisure and observation before there was any active contact.

"Fujiwara." He said sternly. "She knows what I do." He nodded upwards at me, and turned to the table to select himself a biscuit with the weight of a tortured soul slowing his hands.

I had to bite the inside of my cheek to not grin or laugh at him, right then and there.

The final girl was smiling happily, her hair that vibrant reddish colour that I had always wished for; my slightly browner hue was always in my mind less striking than that brightness. She waved hello to Sasaki, and shrugged with a laugh. "Tachibana Kyouko, and thank you Miss Kurumi, though I've always been more partial to chestnut tones myself."

Fujiwara paused in the middle of raising the biscuit to his mouth, and glared at the both of us. "Show off." He muttered. He looked like he might have said more, but Sasaki was shuffling around to greet Tachibana with a huge hug. She rocked back to a more stable sitting position and surveyed the three assembled before her.

"To begin with, I assume you've all been briefed by your organisations and informants? I don't want to start with anyone lagging behind, we haven't got the time to play catch-up."

Fujiwara sighed, and shrugged. "We received the information transfer from _The Agency_ if you must know, yes."

The way he capitalised those words rubbed me the wrong way entirely. I had to be the adult, though, and resist the urge to glare at him.

"Confirmed." Suou was straightforward.

"Oh yep, though you're projecting so much that I hardly needed to!"

Sasaki had the grace to look ashamed when Tachibana said that. "Sorry, that wasn't part of the emergency training. We only had two years to fit it all in."

"To fit what in, precisely?"

Damn, up closer and younger, Fujiwara sure wasn't any nicer.

"I have been trained in more rational and peaceful ways of life. The inequality, neglect and disgust I suffered at the hands of my older brother was only the starting point; I envision a world of equals, where everyone's will and desires are recognised and understood. Even my awful brother is worth loving, for his flaws and his positive points."

I recognised something in Sasaki that I made a personal note to discuss with her once this meeting was over.

"So you are like Suzumiya, but sane. That is one positive thing, at least. Though I still do not like the idea of being forced into a group situation."

Sasaki shrugged. "You obviously haven't read the info-dumps we've been sending you, if you think we're going to work as a group on this."

The sudden shock amongst the children assembled was amazing. Perhaps it was their inexperience? I had always known to fully prepare myself for any mission. But no, I was not a teacher today, not for them, at least. I kept my mouth busy with a weak cup of genmaicha and hmmned rather than spoke.

"I won't tell you our final objective, but we're going to operate as independent agents until the time is right," Sasaki held up her hand, confidence growing with her smile as she picked up steam, "and you'll know when that is. We won't all band together. The idea is to provide foils and distractions to serve the purposes of our organisations and the universe at large. When we do come into conflict with Kyon, I'll have developed a strong list of excuses and justifications we can present to our rivals. We can keep in touch and discuss these without having to meet or collaborate."

Even Fujiwara seemed in a better mood. "So we can do our own thing? I'm not your subordinate after all?"

Sasaki shrugged. "I might need you, but I doubt it. As far as I can tell, we've got at least three years until anything of concern for us happens. And like I said, we're all equals. So just write down your contact details, and I'll see you in a few years."

Sasaki grinned and helped herself to a small cake. Suou mechanically and awkwardly fumbled her details onto a piece of paper, and left before Fujiwara had even picked up her discarded pen. He strode out full of pomp and once he was gone I finally allowed myself a soft giggle.

In the corner, Sasaki was assuring Tachibana that they didn't _have_ to avoid each other for three years; that yes she'd love to go for coffee someday soon. Tachibana agreed readily, but then glanced worriedly across the room at me.

"But why'd you travel with her agency? Wasn't Fujiwara's good enough?"

Sasaki rolled her eyes. "Family. They'd have worried if I let anyone else help me get established here, of course."

"Oh, yeah, of course. I hate family politics."

I politely ignored them as best I could while they said their goodbyes. Before I knew it, the sweet young Tsuruya was showing Tachibana to the door and I was alone with Sasaki.

"I knew your name, from my paperwork," I told her apologetically, "but Kyon never introduced you by name. For some reason, you were always in my mind as Kyon's sister, not Sasaki."

Sasaki smiled. "...And you probably know my future self better? I know we end up, er, working together."

"Yeah, that too." I was relieved that she seemed to understand. She was a very welcoming and kind girl, just her presence set me at ease. "So I assume I am here to establish you in this time period? You will be attending North Junior High, correct?"

"Yep."

All right, that was something to work with. I stretched my legs out and offered her my hand. I would return to take my leave of the Tsuruya family later. For the moment I wanted to get Sasaki settled in her new home.

The apartment block was familiar, it was the one where I had lived for three years, though of course it itself was three years younger than I had ever known it. As per standard operation procedures, there was a key waiting for us hidden in a particular place near the correct room.

Sasaki's eyes widened. "Wow, how'd you do that?"

I shrugged. "Well, I'm a time traveller. Now that I know which room you are staying in, I shall at some point travel back in time and lease it on your behalf, and hide this key in a place I can find it."

"Oh. That's... surprisingly obvious and boring."

We let ourselves into the room and I sighed heavily. "You should try doing it for a living. It's... well, repetitive isn't a strong enough word for it. Recursive, maybe. Oh, and what size are you? I expect I will have gone shopping for clothing for you as well."

It took Sasaki a moment to process my odd grammar before she smiled and whispered her sizing in my ear. I won't tell; it's a very sensitive and private subject for many women, after all. Sasaki seemed to be settling in quite happily, especially since all she really needed to do for the immediate future was be herself. Not part of any agency, she wouldn't have any reports to write or objectives to meet.

"I wanted to talk to you," I said finally once we'd gone food shopping and cooked a simple meal in the small apartment kitchen, "about going to school with Kyon. I mean, I know my experience was different... I never knew him before I went to high school. But I recognise that emotion in your eyes. The temptation to try and get what you missed out on in early childhood somehow, that father or older brother figure... be careful. Not of him, but your own self. Your heart will get broken."

Sasaki's eyes met mine, very knowing and sad for all their youth. "I know." She said. "You've told me that before, you know? And I know better than to try to meet myself or change anything. I've got, er, lists, from the agency, so that I can avoid the worst times. I'll be safe, my dear sweet old-woman niece."

"Well, _Aunty_," I teased her back, "make sure you do. I-"

But what I wanted to say would never be heard, and I would very soon forget what had been on my mind. My TPDD beeped, and I checked to discover that I had a mission update. When I hadn't technically been given a mission at all yet, it was a little silly to call it a mission update, but anyway... I was due in 2003 ASAP.

It wasn't the first time I'd had to return to my old high-school and it was really amusing to think that to Kyon I was "adult" Asahina, when I had only been a student there myself a few months before. A few inches of height and three years of oestrogen working on my breasts and hips apparently were enough to fool him. He'd asked me more than once about my age, but I'd always passed it off as "classified information."

"I, um, have to go. I have an errand to run for my superiors."

Sasaki smiled and poked her tongue out at me playfully. "Gotcha, miss time traveller! I'll see you in three years, or minus three years, depending on which way you're counting!"

I raised an eyebrow. I hadn't known that Sasaki had met an older me before, though given that she'd apparently spent two years in training with her capabilities, it was inevitable. Perhaps I was the one who would recruit her?

"It's almost a shame your powers manifested like this," I told her honestly, "You'd have made a great time travel agent."

"Oh? Oh, you have no idea. Just you wait until you find it all out."

I made a note in my head to come back some day and question Sasaki about it all later. I did not want to put off my duties any more than I had to; I would run the risk of arriving back in my natural Time-Plane too late to get any sleep at all before young Kurumi's night-time class.

As was becoming fast habit, I travelled discreetly through time to 2003, arriving in a quiet and unnoticeable place within the apartment building's corridors. I had arrived on the designated date early in the morning, so that I could visit Nagato in her home and request her help in not only identifying the purpose of my visit, but in sneaking into the school.

What I found was quite serendipitously hilarious. Thanks to Sasaki's exposed breasts earlier in the day, my mind had been going back to the first time I'd found out about my mole. It had come as a shock, more from the disgust of thinking about Kyon looking at my breasts again, but I had soon realised that I had begun to stumble into the causation loops that I'd studied in a lot of depth. Nothing was linear, and so it was more laughable than scary that now my body and mind had both returned to this day.

Nagato nodded to me, and having identified the date and reminded me not to open the bedroom door in her apartment, she left me there alone. A quick data transfer was all I needed to comprehend the destabilisation that this time-plane was going through from Suzumiya's growing dissatisfaction and depression. But wait, there was more. A small addendum at the back of the data-file, a set course based on Nagato, Koizumi and my own past self's research into Suzumiya's moods and needs, as well as Kyon's own behaviour and personality. Just one idea, that I had to plant in him. But knowing the sense of humour that my superiors had with my mission assignment timings – and I was becoming quite suspicious by that point in time, I was pretty sure I knew who was pulling the strings, and she wore her hair in a bun these days – there was more. I had to be cunning and somehow without disgusting myself or encouraging Kyon's boyish hormones reveal the location of my congenital mole.

I gave Nagato some time to get out of sight, and scanned the area to the best of my ability before I headed out myself. There was three hours before school started, and in that time I had to find some stationery and post a letter.

_At lunch,_

_I'll be waiting in the clubroom._

_- Mikuru_

__Signed, sealed, delivered, I was presented with a dilemma. I had been too efficient and vigilant during my mission, and there wasn't really anywhere on the school grounds that would be safe to hide. Then again, I couldn't really walk out across the empty schoolyard without being noticed. I settled for what was probably a terrible idea, but the only place I was pretty sure my past self would not visit. I returned to the S.O.S Brigade clubroom and kept one hand in my pocket on my TPDD just in case. I sat on the floor with my back against the door, and hoped that nobody could see me through the window. It was an awkward angle from the ground, I was sure it was safe.

This part wasn't something that Kyon had ever realised about time travel; we'd always been lucky enough to show up at the right time or find a way around meeting ourselves without too much fuss. It was one thing to spend a week as Tsuruya's or Nagato's guest, another thing entirely to know of the minutes and hours often spent simply waiting. Sometimes time was like that; you couldn't be precise with some events, and even when you could it wasn't always possible to simply pop in at the right time. Time travel... involved a lot of shopping for the basics like socks and underwear. A lot of waiting around just in case. A lot of days like this one, where I had anywhere between six hours or immeasurable days before I could entice Kyon to meet me in a secluded location.

Would it be the first time he'd ever seen my adult self? Maybe it was, who knew. I should have been practising lines in my head, teaching myself the spiel so that it would flow naturally when the time came. But instead I was just feeling guilty that I'd never recognised the similarities between Kyon's sister and Sasaki before, and that I'd run off so soon after implanting her in 2000. Prompting Kyon to stabilise Suzumiya was important, I knew that theoretically, but I had always been a sucker for family connections and that my biological aunt knew me, seemed to like me, was what I focused on. It was indulgent and silly and would do more for me than it would her, but I spent a good few minutes composing a letter to her in my head wistfully. Then I remembered the stationery I had bought just that morning to write the letter to Kyon, and dropped my head back against the door in exasperation with myself.

Of course I could send her a letter. I knew her address, I knew her name and she knew my name, and I could quite easily drop it by on my way back home once I'd dealt with Kyon. There. I wouldn't step on the toes of my past self, wouldn't have to reveal any details about anything. I took my time thoughtfully composing a letter that I hoped conveyed love, support and pride. Telling her that I understood the Asahina that Sasaki would soon encounter would be irritating at times, but to bear with her; she was a young girl who had so far lacked the guidance of a real Aunt, after all.

I signed off simply and in a way that few people in the time-plane could possibly recognise; I wrote my own name (no surname of course) in small tidy characters at the bottom of the letter, then I sealed it and tucked it into my bag for later.

I must have taken longer than I thought composing the letter, because I could hear footsteps coming down the hallway. For appearance's sake I crossed the room to stand at the window, to give Kyon the impression that I had been reminiscing about school life rather than crouching beside a door in an undignified position, to hide any hint of my nefarious communication with his not-so-young sister and previous classmate.

I did honestly miss him, and when the clubroom door opened my smile was genuine. It was just wonderful to see him safe and looking at me with that good old confused blank expression. Maybe I was just becoming hardened and cynical from all my experiences in time-travel, but I found it far too easy to slip back into my hysterical girly persona to distract Kyon from thinking too hard about my artifice regarding the mole and to make sure that my serious expression and tone impressed upon him the utmost importance of fairytales and folklore.


	13. Chapter 13

**2004, Asahina Residence, Kyon's house and surrounding area, Tokyo**

Routine is easy to fall into, but so is chaos. There was so much unpredictability during my mission as Asahina Mikuru that after a few long months of exhaustion I simply became used to life being, well, life. By the second year of my mission, there was hardly anything that could terrify me, though I was careful to keep up my act of timidity.

We spent the Friday evening at Kyon's house watching an old horror film as a Brigade, arguing about who owed money for what snacks. Kyon was complaining about how the film was too long; how he'd end up sleeping in and why the hell had Haruhi volunteered the two of them to help out with the school's pre-entrance exams for students.

"It's not like the exams matter, I mean it's not a private school or an ideal one. There won't be much competition or excitement"

Suzumiya grabbed the bowl of chips from him with a glare and relocated herself onto the floor beside my legs. Kyon's little sister – who had snuck her way back downstairs so many times we'd just given up trying to protect her young eyes – exclaimed loudly and bounced onto the chair beside Kyon to gain pride of place in the best viewing position possible.

"It's not about the _exams_, Kyon, it's about your duty to the S.O.S Brigade! We need to be on the ball, keeping an eye out for new recruits and potential targets!"

"Targets, Haruhi? They're students, not live game."

Sometimes I don't think Kyon knew he said those things aloud. With Haruhi ignoring him resolutely, Koizumi smiling inanely and me occupied in my own mind half the time he probably had no signs from us that we'd heard him say a word. Nagato of course didn't count; she usually ignored anything that wasn't directly addressed to her. Or appeared to. I knew from experience and my dossiers how uncannily observant her alien mind could be.

"You do realise," he said, "that showing the brats where to put their shoes and helping keep the hallways clear of refuse isn't going to get us anywhere near enough to the exams to really observe them?"

Haruhi snorted. "Of course I know that! That's why you're going to cover for me!"

It was a testament to how long we'd all been doing this that Kyon did not react with any anger or exasperation, simply hard-learnt capitulation. His heart wasn't in the criticism, and he answered her as if his agreement was implicit and understood. "It's far easier for two people to pretend to be three – or even four to pretend to be five – than it is for one to pretend to be _two_. And don't get me started on the gender issues I might have with this. Why don't you ever consult me in your plans?"

"Shh!" Kyon's little sister really wanted to see the film, I guess.

Nagato stared at Kyon evenly, and slipped a bookmark between two pages before speaking. "I apologise, but I cannot avoid my family reunion." I was so used to Nagato herself now that I could hear the warmth in some of her voice, especially when she spoke about her minions. I bit my lip, hoping that Suzumiya wasn't rubbing off on her.

"And I've got that dental appointment." Koizumi shrugged and rolled his eyes, something I barely noticed in the darkened flickering room. On the television screen, someone's feet were creaking against a staircase as ominous music trilled and hummed discordantly.

Kyon opened his mouth as if to criticise Koizumi, but then he caught sight of my own apologetic smile. He shut it, and shrugged, sinking back into the chair. There was a look in his eyes that was almost a warning to our little group; he knew we were up to something, and he'd be wanting to know what later on.

Hopefully by the end of the weekend we'd have synthesised enough of a mess to involve him.

It was a welcome change to wake up on a Saturday morning and to be free to enact our own plans without fear of diversions from Suzumiya or Kyon. With the two of them occupied and at a known safe location, we were safe to either have a whole weekend off or make good use of our time. It had hardly been a choice; we understood each other now, and so while I tested the limitations on time travel and strategic location choices, Nagato conferred with the IDSE and Koizumi picked up his phone to call up the ringleader of our rivals. The elusive and confusingly friendly Miss Sasaki.

We'd been worried at first, that their group was greater in numbers, as well as more lucid and powerful than our own. Suzumiya and Kyon basically counted as dead-weight if we ever had to go up against them directly. But they were less organised than we were, more scattered and divided by individual goals and personalities. In comparison the S.O.S Brigade even with all its subdivisions and duplicitous internal dialogues was far more solid and strong. Not that we were really any sort of sinister organisation, of course. We had our own organisations and agencies even with our shared priorities, and we had no need for any more.

In any case, by midday we had done nothing that any observers could have said looked like anything more than some teenagers playing with toys, reading books and talking on the telephone. Like perfectly normal kids we met at a local landmark near the train station and made our way to a reasonably priced café. Not one of the ones we usually frequented, but then again we didn't exactly want word getting back to Suzumiya that we'd been skiving off Brigade duties for the sake of petty socialisation.

The next part of our plan was quite mundane. We were to wait until Sasaki and her companions arrived. So we did what came naturally; we ordered tea for the whole table and a diplomatic amount of biscuits that we could afford and nibble on with enough left over for our imminent guests.

Instead of bringing out a book, Nagato stared at me. Koizumi waited until our drinks were brought over, then rolled his eyes at Nagato and elbowed me gently in the ribs. "So? Come on, you've got to explain why Suzumiya was staring at your breasts so speculatively when we all went home last night."

I crossed my arms, then I realised that the action only served to make the guilty parties to my shame even more obvious. I exhaled and nearly burnt my tongue on my tea, to buy a few more seconds of dignity. But I couldn't hold out for long, and I knew I should get on with it before I was telling not two people but six the truth of my shame.

"It happened on Friday, when we split up to get supplies I ended up with Suzumiya, remember?"

"Yes." Nagato said.

"So we were walking out of the video store, in the direction of Kyon's house. But at that time of day, the sun and the glass display window meant that you could see our reflections in it very um, w-well."

I took a moment to regain my composure, the memory of the incident strong and clear in my memory.

"Suzumiya said that it was unfair that my breasts were so large in comparison to hers," I confessed, "and I replied without thinking that breastfeeding would make them l-larger."

It was an idiot's mistake to have made, and an agent of my training and experience should never have been so complacent around a mission target. It was unthinkable. I almost took another bolstering sip of tea, but my guilty heart must have been pushing against my diaphragm; I hiccuped instead.

I couldn't meet their eyes. Nagato was unresponsive, but I could feel the amusement, just feel it radiating off of Koizumi. Any second now and he'd burst out laughing, I just knew it.

"In my defense," I objected, "I did cover quickly. I more or less followed that up with a frantic explanation that I'd been reading about pregnancy for a biology assignment, and that it had mentioned that breast size can be permanently increased by pregnancy hormones. So maybe if she ever had children, her breasts would increase, er, in volume."

Koizumi _did_ laugh, then, starting with a reluctant snort and then collapsing forwards onto the table with shaking shoulders. Nagato merely watched me across our teacups, her gaze more thoughtful than anything else from what I could tell.

"Did you mention that it is also possible for breasts to decrease in size, sometimes becoming smaller than before pregnancy, after breastfeeding is abandoned in favour of solid foods?"

Koizumi made a helpless noise from where he lay against the table, and he clutched at the edge of it with a desperate hand. He must have been very tense from our recent activities, I reasoned, because nobody sane would find breastfeeding so amusing. Maybe it was my incompetence? I refused absolutely to even think of considering the connection between myself, breastfeeding, and Suzumiya. That way lay madness.

"Ah, no. I thought it prudent not to."

Nagato nodded. "That was wise." She moved her arm as she spoke, sweeping Koizumi's teacup out of the vicinity of his shuddering guffaws.

"Anyway," I sighed, hiccups finally fading as my tea reached just shy of tepid, "that's probably why she was so fixated on my chest. All evening. It was creepy. At least when she gropes me, it's like when Mum takes me bra shopping. Painful and assessing. The... _intent_ in Suzumiya's eyes was so threatening, I thought my breasts might just retract into my ribs out of self-protection."

Koizumi made an incredulous squawking noise beside me.

Nagato stared at my chest. "I did not know you were modified with that capability in mind."

I rolled my eyes, she had to know better than that, right? Was she joking? I had better play it straight just in case, I rationalised. "I wasn't – they weren't – Nagato. It was just... a bad way of describing how threatened I felt. As if Suzumiya was issuing a challenge to the density of my mammaries."

Nagato accepted the explanation, and I turned my eyes out to look over the café. I had doubted that we'd get any effective discussions going before the others showed up. It was a faint hope now that our collective would even seem sane when the others showed up. I wished fervently that they would run late, or that Koizumi would start regaining his composure.

Sadly, it was not to be. The door to the café swung open and in walked our rivals and sometimes reluctant allies, led in front by a glowering Fujiwara and followed up in the rear by the mechanical and awkwardly human movements of Kuyou Suou. Kuyou's long hair seemed almost as inflexible and carefully structured as her personality.

The three of us shuffled over so that there was enough space for everyone to take a seat at the table. Sasaki greeted us happily, Tachibana politely, and Fujiwara sat without a word. Kuyou remained standing, staring at Koizumi.

Oh Uncle Itsuki, I thought to myself, the stories I'll have about you when I get home! To Kuyou I said "He's not always like that."

Kuyou's eyes flicked to me, and Nagato shifted awkwardly in her seat. But without a sound Kuyou settled down into a chair and laid her hands flat in her lap with mechanical precision.

"So, how've you been, since we saw you last?"

Sasaki was so open and friendly, it was hard at times to believe that her mild disposition lay behind powers similar to Suzumiya's own. It was also hard to get used to the idea that she was often working against us, when she was so amicable and sweet.

I sighed heavily, but smiled back at her. "Not too bad."

Tachibana smirked, and Sasaki nodded emphatically. "Same here, you know? Busy times, but nothing we'd admit to in polite company like this."

I looked sideways at Koizumi, who was finally recovering himself and sitting upright in his seat.

"I'm not sure if 'polite' is the right word for some of us." I muttered under my breath. "So anyway, you know what we want from you already?"

Sasaki nodded.

"So is there anything you need or want from us in exchange?"

There was a keen and hungry look in Tachibana's eyes as I spoke, and I felt a strong premonition that our preliminary negotiations regarding our plans were going to be very demanding of my patience.

"To put it in a nutshell," Fujiwara said sternly, "we want data rather than services."

Nagato frowned – visibly frowned – at his words. She said nothing, a truce of silence between herself and the other data-based entitiy at the table that we had agreed upon quite early in our association with each other.

"Data?" Koizumi didn't seem to like the sound of that, and I know I didn't. Koizumi stared straight into Fujiwara's eyes. "What data, specifically, do you mean?"

Sasaki cleared her throat and laughed awkwardly in the silent tension that answered Koizumi's question.

"Well, it's a bit of a sensitive subject. You see, ideally we'd like to be able to leave it unspecified for the moment. Narrow it down closer to the time-plane in which it will be needed."

My lips twisted together as I assimilated that information. "I think that our requirements from you are far smaller than the security risk to us that yours pose. You can't mean for this to be a one-for-one exchange here."

A bit of the cheerfulness left Sasaki's eyes. "I know you have your reservations," she said, "but when the time does come, the information we shall most likely need will be very minor indeed. It will be of little value to both our parties, but relevant to my interests nonetheless."

"I'm not talking about the information itself," I replied as seriously as I could, "but the way something like that can hang over our heads. If we have no idea about what it is you want, it may affect our activities and also our trust in our knowledge. That alone is so huge an advantage that I almost worry you're trying to set us up for something cataclysmic in the near future."

Fujiwara opened his mouth to say something derisive, but his words were lost to me; my attention was occupied with a minute flicker of fond exasperation that showed on Sasaki's face before her polite stern smile returned.

"We have no intentions of anything of the sort," Sasaki said earnestly, "but I can see how the secrecy of our demands may be upsetting. I hadn't wanted to put this out there, but I'm going to have to now. It's not meant to be a threat, not really, but if you can't agree to our request then I will eventually have to employ a specific tactic."

I had a sinking feeling in my gut. Fujiwara nodded sharply, once, a bitter mean smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"I," Sasaki explained, "went to junior high school with Kyon, you already know that. He has nearly completely forgotten about me with the activities we have been synthesising to keep Suzumiya occupied. I know his home address, his phone number and email. I've been avoiding direct contact out of deference to the jurisdictions of your agencies, but if you do not agree I will have no choice but to directly contact Kyon and convince him to help me obtain the data I will need."

Koizumi was completely sober-faced now. He sucked in a slow breath beside me. Sasaki's demeanour was friendly enough, but her words were quite direct and unforgiving.

"If it's something so serious," I protested, my voice rising with the panic that I felt, "and you know it's going to come and what you might need when it does come, why all this secrecy? Why can't you give us the same trust we've given you in the past, and just ask for _our_ help in return?"

"She is, you idiot." Fujiwara spat out with a scowl. "She just doesn't want to compromise any of our organisations or loyalties when the whole thing is still avoidable. Think. If I, or you, or any of us had information about something this big, it might disrupt the equilibrium between the powers interested in this time-plane."

I felt like I'd been slapped across the face, but Fujiwara had a point. A solid point. Most attention was on Suzumiya and Kyon. I myself was far from willing to draw attention to my exact biological heritage, and it was arrogant and stupid to assume that I was the only one who had secrets. I had little choice, I supposed.

"Fine. But you've always had the option of negotiating with us over known dangers. I'd like, for the safety of Nagato and Koizumi – and Kyon and Suzumiya – to have the option to re-negotiate the value of the favour when all the details come to light. If it becomes disproportionately costly to us at the time, we should be able to ask for some recompense."

Sasaki nodded, and we shook hands on it. The surface of the table was sticky beneath my forearms. I rubbed at them as I sat back in my seat, half glad and half devastated that the initial negotiations had passed so quickly.

Out of all of us, only Sasaki, Koizumi and Tachibana truly had need of personal organisers. They pulled them out and opened them in the clear spaces of the table and after ordering lunch, we set out to co-ordinate dates, times and possible backup plans. When we had identified a number of suitable times during the school year, Sasaki stretched her neck in both directions and grinned around at all of us. For the moment, at least, we were working as one group with shared common purpose.

"All right! Let's plan this abduction!"

If only our shared purpose wasn't the orchestration of my own kidnapping. Oh, the things I did in the name of duty!

* * *

_Important note: The reviews to Chapter 13 had me checking and discovering that though I'd set the canon as 'book canon', this does not show up as obviously on ff dot net as it does at other archives I use. I want to clarify here that the kidnapping mentioned is not plot relevant to The Anagram of Suzumiya Kurumi, but is a reference to one of the adventures Kyon and his friends have involving Fujiwara in 'The Scheme of Suzumiya Haruhi' by Nagaru Tanigawa, which is the seventh volume in the series. I'm not taking the plot in a strange direction, I just wanted to write a very short chapter that played around with and referenced back to the books, to show how some of the implications from my plot devices would interact with the source material. As I've had Kurumi mention in the past, aside from relevant details to her story, there won't be any re-hashing of Kyon's experiences with the S.O.S brigade; this is all you'll really see mentioned about any kidnapping and it's not a huge plot point.  
_

_I didn't mean to confuse anyone, and I was sure that it was clear I was basing this off the books and not the anime or manga series. I'm very sorry that I didn't check the visible formatting better, or mention my source material more explicitly at the start. I'm putting this note at the end of Chapter 13 and the start of Chapter 14 just in case anyone misses it. I'll also go back sometime and point out in a more visible way that this is fanfiction based on the books and as such relies on an understanding of book canon up to volume nine at times. Thanks so much for reading and reviewing so far, especially since some of the characters I've used recently are more present in the books than any of the other mediums.  
_


	14. Chapter 14

_Important note: The reviews to Chapter 13 had me checking and discovering that though I'd set the canon as 'book canon', this does not show up as obviously on ff dot net as it does at other archives I use. I want to clarify here that the kidnapping mentioned is not plot relevant to The Anagram of Suzumiya Kurumi, but is a reference to one of the adventures Kyon and his friends have involving Fujiwara in 'The Scheme of Suzumiya Haruhi' by Nagaru Tanigawa, which is the seventh volume in the series. I'm not taking the plot in a strange direction, I just wanted to write a very short chapter that played around with and referenced back to the books, to show how some of the implications from my plot devices would interact with the source material. As I've had Kurumi mention in the past, aside from relevant details to her story, there won't be any re-hashing of Kyon's experiences with the S.O.S brigade; this is all you'll really see mentioned about any kidnapping and it's not a huge plot point._

_I didn't mean to confuse anyone, and I was sure that it was clear I was basing this off the books and not the anime or manga series. I'm very sorry that I didn't check the visible formatting better, or mention my source material more explicitly at the start. I'm putting this note at the end of Chapter 13 and the start of Chapter 14 just in case anyone misses it. I'll also go back sometime and point out in a more visible way that this is fanfiction based on the books and as such relies on an understanding of book canon up to volume nine at times. Thanks so much for reading and reviewing so far, especially since some of the characters I've used recently are more present in the books than any of the other mediums._

_

* * *

_

**April 2025, Suzumiya Residence, Tokyo; 2005, Kyon's Residence, Tokyo**

I was used to it, after all my years of training and the non-linear lesson schedules that I was keeping to with my younger self, but that didn't mean that I wasn't exhausted. The last week had been a lesson in endurance and stamina. I'd come back from my busy day in the early 2000s implanting Sasaki and handling Kyon to go right into a full day of teaching. I hadn't had a chance to sleep or rest at all. Luckily my younger self was having her first day of this fatigue-type training, and she was about as able to focus as I was. I set basic reading tasks and didn't bother with more complex equations or science. I could hardly remember any of it myself, my head was so groggy, and I knew for a fact that young Kurumi would stumble into her dorm room after class unable to recall anything that had happened.

When I had been that age, I had been terrified that I'd missed something important. It was a relief, late as it was in my life, to learn that I'd been quite safe and had not missed a single interesting fact.

When I got home at 6am on Saturday morning and stumbled straight into bed, I felt my arms and legs sink heavy with tiredness into the mattress. But I didn't undress or even pull the duvet over myself. I just stared up at the ceiling and let the thoughts I had suppressed in the name of duty come back to wash over me. I felt that I'd had more than enough huge realisations for one year, starting with the abrupt end to my time acting as Asahina. Now there was yet another thing to weigh on my mind and to mention to Aunt Yuki and Uncle Itsuki. Knowing them, they'd already made a note of it somewhere, and had been keeping it quiet until they knew I had been let in on the secret. I could easily imagine that dowager of an old woman that I looked to become one day going back in time with lists on paper, of classified information.

I hadn't really known much about my Aunt Sasaki. We'd never really had any contact with Kyon's family – I had learned of course that Mum kept her pregnancy secret from nearly everyone she knew at the time – and Mum had always kept me so busy that I'd never thought about it. It should have been suspicious, that my father and his sister had vanished at the same time. But she'd never mentioned it, and I'd never asked. I'd never associated the absence of that young ponytailed girl in photographs with the absence of Asahina and Kyon. I suppose it was partly because most of the photographs we had were from S.O.S Brigade activities, and young Sasaki hadn't been invited along on many towards the end.

I didn't feel guilty. Not like I had when I'd finally recognised myself as Mikuru and then myself as Miruku and all my other future selves. Not like when I'd learned more and more about what lay behind the various aspects of my life, and Tanabata had begun to take on a much more significant prominence in my very existence. There weren't really any hints that had been around regarding Sasaki, nothing I could have assimilated in my childhood or training that could have prepared me for meeting and recognising her. Well, nothing more than I'd known at the time. Just enough, barely.

I hadn't trusted myself to look her up in the phone book or databases at the agency, and I had promised myself that I'd look into things on the weekend, away from the observing eyes of my superiors, after I'd caught up on lost sleep. But I couldn't fall asleep with so much on my mind, could I? I'd thrown my biorhythms out with the strange schedule, and so I gave up on getting any rest. I lay there, feeling lethargic and immovable, until staying still itself felt unbearably difficult. I got up again in stages, curling onto my side, placing one foot then the other onto the floor, heaving myself upright again in a dizzy arc of un-brushed hair and crumpled flapping unbuttoned shirtsleeves.

Mum wasn't awake yet, and the house was quiet. I hunted down the tablet PC we kept on the low table for general use, and started searching news article databases for any mentions of Kyon or Sasaki's names, their neighbourhood, and disappearances. I got a few hits almost at once, but they were little more than I had expected. A boy and his sister, missing overnight, no evidence of kidnapping, police continue to investigate. Appeals for witnesses, that sort of thing. I crossed my legs and sat at the small table in the kitchen while the kettle burbled and the stairs creaked a little under Mum's feet.

"Morning, you. Thought you'd be asleep, you said you were going to be out all weekend."

I shrugged. "Yeah, I wanted to look something up first, though."

"Oh?" Mum leaned over my shoulder and blinked blearily at the tablet's screen. "Kyon, eh? I thought I told you, no father complexes in my household, missy!"

"Hey, I'm not looking at it for him!" I was perhaps a bit more outraged than I should have been, but really, after all the creepy looks I'd been getting from Kyon, I was pretty sensitive about that issue. I pushed away from her and turned the tablet over, left it face-down on the table as I started making tea.

"Oh come on, brat, make us a real drink!"

I rolled my eyes, and pulled out the French press. Mum was particular about her coffee, even when she was too asleep to really notice what she was drinking.

"Fine. But you're rinsing it out, okay?"

Mum shrugged. We both knew I'd end up doing all the cleaning.

"And I was reading about Sasaki, not Kyon."

"Who?"

I spooned coffee into the glass jug and poured some hot water over it, left it to sit for a minute or two. I picked the tablet up again and pointed at the little girl in the photograph. "Her. Kyon's little sister."

Mum nodded and waved her hand at the kitchen bench.

"You do have to wait for good coffee to actually brew, you know?"

"Meh. You're a time traveller, can't you make it go faster?"

"As if you'd know how real time travel works, it takes _years_ of intense study," I muttered under my breath. I poured the coffee out when it was done, and put it down in front of her. Slamming would be too strong a word for the force I used, but it was pretty close.

"Anyway, I ran into Sasaki at work the other day, so I was just wondering when she'd first come to the agency, that was all."

I was worried after I'd said it that Mum was going to start leaping to the same conclusions I had – that maybe Kyon was somewhere in the agency too – but instead she just blew on her mug and took a tentative sip before whining.

"Am I going to be the _only_ one in this family who doesn't have anything exciting happen to them?"

I bit my tongue, and just barely held myself back from telling her all of it. She didn't know, I was sure, and we were all still a bit wary of her. Just because she wasn't currently making any closed spaces didn't mean that she couldn't or wouldn't again. I did not want to provoke any reactions like that, no sir!

"You work in TV, isn't that exciting?"

She frowned down into her mug. "About as much as a hole in the head."

I opened my mouth to reply that I'd thought she _liked_ her job, but she was finishing her coffee in a long painfully hot-looking gulp, cheeks flushed from it and forehead sweating. "About Kyon's sister – Sasaki, you said - there's some papers and stuff in a shoebox in the linen cupboard. I collected them, back when I was sure there was something going on. Maybe that will answer your questions? I gotta get to work."

It wasn't odd that she was rushing off to work on a weekend. Even when there wasn't a sudden interview or opportunity, she often had ideas and she liked going in to the studio to start feeling out whether or not they'd work for an episode. But it did seem oddly convenient, giving her an out from the conversation. I tried asking her about it as she headed up to her bedroom, stripped, and got dressed, but she remained resolutely silent and dedicated to her tasks. Her expression was grim at times, but at the front door she flicked me in the forehead, smiled, and stuck her tongue out at me.

"Call Yuki and Itsuki, would you? Make sure the gang's all here tonight, I've got a mega super plan for a special edition of the show, and I'll need everyone's help to finish it."

"Ah, sure, I guess. I can do that."

She clapped me sharply on the shoulder, and nodded. "Good. I'll see you at dinner, then!"

My mouth was open to ask a question, but the front door had already slammed shut behind her. I stared at the door for a few seconds, then carried my coffee upstairs with me. I doubted that there would be any more information on Sasaki than I'd be likely to find online, but it was worth a shot. With Mum, you never knew when she'd notice something that seemed innocuous but was somehow relevant and important.

I sat on the third stair down, with the shoebox in my lap and the mug on the floor near my shoulder. I sifted through newspaper clippings that were more or less identical to those I'd been reading online, but these were annotated by Mum – Suzumiya at the time to me. Some of the bleakness of her feelings had shown through in the comments. Some articles had Kyon's name scribbled out and the words _bastard_, _arsehole_ and _deserter_ scrawled across them in angry pen. There were multiple copies of every article, every photograph, as if she'd run out and bought multiple copies of every newspaper that year. Probably she had. I could imagine her sitting in a cafe with Nagato and Koizumi, scissors in their hands as they all clipped out the titbits of officially released information.

It took me a while to notice it, to see it; the date. While the articles had only identified the disappearance of Kyon and Sasaki as happening within a one-week period (their parents had been away on a business trip, there was confusion amongst the neighbours and classmates who claimed to have seen both brother and sister at varying times during the week), Mum had appended every scrap of paper with one date. The day before my mission ended, the day that Kyon had failed to chase after Suzumiya. The day I had been caught wrapped in his arms.

I was too tired. I hadn't slept very much or very well. I was carrying exhaustion from a whole week of overworking myself, and still hadn't gotten used to the idea of Sasaki being part of the agency, for all that it made a kind of sense. I couldn't fight back my curiosity, my desire to know. _How_ had it happened? _Why _was it Sasaki? _What_ was I missing in all of this? I decided that it would be easier to skip back on an unauthorised trip and apologise than it would be to start appealing to my superiors for information. The last time I'd resolved to investigate, I'd only ended up with more duties and been thwarted in my attempt to demand more transparency.

I should have known better to travel, the state I was in. I wasn't emotionally stable, wasn't fully awake even with tepid coffee sitting bitter and sloshing in my belly. I hardly needed to use the TPDD as a prop anymore, really, but I clung to the childish psychological aid and wrapped clammy nervous fingers around it. I had set the controls not for the clubroom, which in that time-plane was doubtless under supervision from a higher agent than myself, but for Kyon's house on the evening before his disappearance. I would hang around for a day, and observe both Kyon and Sasaki as best I could.

I overshot. There is little more embarrassing to a time traveller than arriving in the wrong time-plane. But I managed one worse than that. I overshot my destination by a month, having not paid strict attention to my preparation. I overshot my location, ending up inside Kyon's house rather than at a safe vantage point. My heart sped up immediately, scared of what might happen were my superiors to notice the mistake I had made. Even if it was just my future self... I knew I'd be screaming and shouting at young Kurumi if she ever made a mistake as bad as this, and I wouldn't expect my future self to be any more forgiving of something this... this... stupid. Just plain stupid.

There were no lights on in the house, no movement at all, from what I could tell. The clock on the wall said it was just past 3pm, but the day was overcast and dark shadows fell over everything. I didn't call out or say a word, just made my way tentatively around the downstairs living area. It was larger than the house I had grown up in, with a small yard and gate and everything outside. I half fantasised about a childhood spent in this house. It would have been surrounded with loving parents, happy laughter, friends. If Kyon hadn't vanished, maybe I would have been brought up here. Surrounded by the adult members of the S.O.S Brigade, with grandparents and an aunt and in an entirely different existence to the one I knew.

I... for once, I didn't like the idea of it. I wouldn't really have swapped my life, my experiences with Kyon, Nagato, Koizumi and even Mum and her young obnoxious self, for anything in the world. Huh. It was a strange thing to realise. I ran a finger along the kitchen bench, not wistful at all, but simple wondering about how different and strange life could be. I knew I'd have to leave soon, and face punishment of some sort from the agency, but I wanted to draw out that moment of peace one second longer.

I couldn't, though. I heard a strange creaking thump from upstairs, and a low moan. It sounded like Kyon, and I cast my mind back to this afternoon. We'd all been busy with schoolwork that week, and the S.O.S Brigade had been on hiatus for a few days while we all got assessment out of the way. Suzumiya had said there was no point in ruining our investigations, no need to have half-distracted Brigade members bungling sensitive UFO stakeouts, so we'd all had a few evenings off.

Was Kyon sick? Injured? I hurried upstairs towards his room, as quiet as I could manage in case there was some sort of monster or danger to be had. I didn't want to go rushing in and get _both_ of us in trouble. From the top of the stairs I could see a sliver of light; Kyon's bedroom door was mostly shut, but not completely. I tiptoed closer, hearing nothing but silence and the slow roll of cloudy weather and the occasional car on the street outside.

There was a rustle of clothing and a gasp. I froze on the spot, no longer moving, just craning my neck to see through the open door as best I could.

I didn't see a monster. Or, rather, I saw a very familiar monster. That flash of hair was... Suzumiya! Her hair, on Kyon's pillow, and from what else I could see through that small opening, there was a strong and manly hand curling around her head, cupping it gently.

"Mmm." Said Suzumiya.

"Oh, Haruhi!" Kyon moaned.

My brain refused to recognise what it was seeing. I turned on my heel, no longer worried about being heard at all, and walked swiftly downstairs. I made sure the front door was locked properly, and let myself out with shaking hands.

I had known, theoretically, that at some point before Kyon's disappearance they must have had sex. How else could I have been conceived? But to know something is one thing, and to see it is another and far more disgusting thing entirely. I shuddered and wished that I could just wipe that memory out of my brain.

Nope, no luck. Even just that small tiny bit I'd seen – and it wasn't like I'd seen much naked skin, or heaven forbid the actual... ew, all right, no thinking about that ever – was enough to traumatise me, to burn the experience into my memory.

In front of me, the gate opened and a younger Sasaki than I had seen in a long time came up the steps towards me. She was smiling, happy, calling out my name.

"Mikuru-chan, hiya!"

"Hi, Sasaki!" I felt like I was forcing my cheerfulness, but Sasaki didn't seem to notice. "Tell you what, let's go out to dinner, just you and me? I came here to ask Kyon about a question in my textbook, but it looks like nobody's home."

Sasaki craned her head around to peer into the dark house. She rolled her eyes, and took my hand with a consoling look on her face. "Yeah, it's totally gross, what they do when Mum and Dad are out of town. I've threatened to tell, but Haruhi's really mean when she wants to be."

"She's pretty mean even when she doesn't want to be," I pointed out, "but anyway, let's not think about such disgusting things ever again. Where shall I take you?"

I was grateful that Sasaki didn't seem to notice how old I was – I suppose I was only one year older than the Mikuru she knew at the time, and it wasn't like I'd grown that much taller in that year. She reached up to take my hand in her own small one, and we set off down the street. We didn't go far, just down to the local shops and up some stairs into an old place that had been there for years. It was a good price – a lot of kids stopped by on their way home from cram school – and I was pretty sure that the busy staff there wouldn't look too closely at the cash I had in my pockets.

Time travellers tended to carry a variety of cash notes that would suit the time period, but I only had what I'd had in my jeans at home. I hadn't thought very hard about my decision to trip back here, and I certainly hadn't taken the time to stop past the agency and hit up my storage locker for supplies. I had what looked like normal Japanese currency, but I wasn't sure if the serial numbers on the notes existed yet or not. A place with high turnover and a busy register? That was as safe as I could get. I certainly didn't want to risk somewhere with security cameras or a digital register. There was a very low chance of my being identified in any way, but I didn't want to take any risks I didn't have to, given how much I'd already botched up. Let this be a lesson to anyone working in my agency or elsewhere: never go joy-tripping in time, always make appropriate preparations.

Sasaki seemed to be happy enough, perched beside me on high stools at the end of a table crowded with other students. We ordered our food over the hubbub of voices and cooking, and settled down beside each other, both of us resting our arms on the worn wooden table.

"I didn't know you knew my name," Sasaki said happily. She swung her legs and smiled happily up at me, "I thought I was just, you know, someone you guys had around because you had to."

I turned to her and smiled back. I felt pretty awful inside, though. We really had been quite dismissive of Sasaki, thinking that our agendas took priority over basic polite decency. Given that I now knew Sasaki would find out all about Suzumiya, myself, Kyon, and the whole mess, the whole thing seemed pointless.

"You've wonderful, and you've been useful more than once to us, you know. Of course I know your name!"

She grinned, and then the food arrived. I realised with shock that _that_ exact moment and sentence from my own lips was why the older and trained Sasaki was so surprised when I had helped establish her in the year 2000. She seemed happy enough even with that, but what a terrible faux pas to make! What a heartbreakingly stupid and inevitable mess. Far more than the repulsive thought of my parents actually... erk, well, yes, _that_... with each other, I regretted that my impulsive and poorly thought out mistake had – was going to have – hurt Sasaki.

We chatted about a lot. About pretty simple things, like homework and food and films and tea. We shared funny stories about Kyon with each other, and finally were were full. We were a little splattered from an accident with a bowl of udon and an elbow early on in the meal. Smiling and red-cheeked from the warmth in the restaurant, we jostled out downstairs onto the street.

Perhaps I had grown used to the company of children that age, having taught my younger self for a few months. Or maybe I just felt guilty and really wanted to make sure Sasaki had a nice night, one not spent suffering the side-effects of... er... no, I still can't breach that topic. You know what I mean.

We were halfway to the convenience store to get some ice-cream for dessert when Sasaki's phone rang. I hadn't known the kid even had a phone at that age, but it did seem practical. Especially since Kyon's parents, to my recollection, had spent a lot of time away from home on business trips and the like.

"Hello? Ah, Kyon, I..." Sasaki didn't get to say any more, because I gently lifted the phone from her and put it to my ear.

"...do you think you're doing? It's after five, you can't stay out all night at your age, idiot!"

"Kyon." I said very loudly and sternly into the phone. "It's me."

"M-mikuru?"

"In a way. Is Haruhi still there?"

There was silence at the other end of the line. I could just imagine the look on Kyon's face. Yes, Kyon, I knew. Oh, how I knew. How I wished I didn't know.

"Er, no. She um, went home."

"Good, I'll bring Sasaki back, then. We'll be there soon."

It was a terrible thing for a child to have witnessed, whether that child was your younger sister or your future offspring. So Kyon deserved to wait while we stopped by the store, and spent a good twenty minutes browsing for the exact right ice-creams. It was cold, and so Sasaki and I walked as fast as we could. With our legs warm from activity and our tongues and faces cold from the night air and our treats, we arrived back at Kyon's house in good spirits.

Kyon must have been shaken by our phone conversation. He didn't chastise Sasaki at all, just shooed her up to her room and then stood by the front door with me, looking as shocked as a guy with a face that passive and bland possibly could. Not much, but you could see it in him if you knew where to look.

"You're the... older Asahina?"

"Not much older, but yes." I confessed. "But that's beside the point. It's a lousy thing to do, letting your sister come home to that sort of thing. You could simply, for example, ask my past self or Nagato to babysit her. It's not as if you haven't got experience at lying to people, you've had years of it with everything that's happened."

"True." He agreed, still frowning slightly. "So is that what you came back for, to take care of Sasaki?"

I shrugged, and was never more grateful for routine phrases than in that moment. "Classified Information." I replied.

"Ah, right, yeah. Fine. Something else, then, before you go? Does the current Asahina know about us – me and Haruhi – or is it something you find out about in the future?"

"Classified Information." That was one kettle of fish I did _not_ want to open. I really just wanted to go home and get into bed and sleep, like I should have instead of coming on this stupid pointless trip.

"Ah, ask a stupid question, I guess. I suppose I'll see you when I see you."

I nodded. "I'm not sure if I'll be appearing in your future or past next, but I hope you will be well."

I got away and then back to my native time-plane as fast as I could, head reeling. I just wanted to collapse dizzily into my comfortable bed, but when I got back the phone was ringing. I'd only left a few minutes between my departure and return, but even so when I picked up the phone Mum's voice came out angry and exasperated.

"Don't bother about calling them, this idea's a total bust. No real scope for a series in Australia, can you believe it? I mean, there's heaps of sinister, deadly things down there. I thought the network would jump at the idea, all that indigenous art and mystical stuff. Ah well."

"So, um, should I cancel with Aunt Yuki and Uncle Itsuki?" I hoped she'd say yes; I hadn't even called them yet.

"Nah, I'll need some company to drown my sorrows with. Be home soon!"

I sighed heavily and hung up, dialled Aunt Yuki's and then Uncle Itsuki's numbers. I'd have maybe an hour's nap before Mum was back in the house, clattering around and demanding attention. Still, I changed into pyjamas and curled up in bed, cocooning myself in the warm dark safety of my duvet.


	15. Chapter 15

**2025, May, the agency**

I had never had any classmates, not until I had actually been placed in my various positions in Junior High School. So I wasn't expecting to be tutoring anyone other than my past self. I was beginning to have strong doubts that there _was_ anyone else in the agency. I imagined that the corridors in the restricted areas were full of the many ages and faces of Kurumi Suzumiya, stretching out into eternity. It was something like that effect you get when you stand between two mirrors and see yourself reflected back and forth between two panes of glass forever, in my head. Just lines and lines of them.

"Good Morning, Kurumi!" An old woman would say to a woman five years my senior.

"Good Morning, Miss Kurumi." The girl would answer, respectfully deferring to the wisdom that would come to her over the years.

And thus the Suzumiya madness grew strong within me. I shook my head and rested it against the glass window of the classroom. But what else was I supposed to think? When I'd _been_ Kurumi, the young girl who had just headed out to pack her bags, eager and ready for her first real long-term trip through time, I'd had no idea that my teacher had been living a different chronology to myself.

I had simply thought that Miss Miruku lived in the agency building; that whenever she was unavailable she was on some sort of mission or secret training of her own. I had never thought that I was being taught out of order, by someone who rarely showed up the same age two days in a row. I had far from covered all of this year of her schooling – I'd only been working for half a year – and yet here I was, seeing her off. She was what, twelve years old? One day ago, for her, she had sat an exam invigilated by a Miss Miruku who was about six months younger. My face had been drawn and tired and depressed, and now it was smiling and happy after weeks of respite and good food and a loving family's worth of hugs and support.

How had I _not_ been able to tell the difference? I was far less observant than I had ever prided myself in being. It was a bit embarrassing, but I still smiled wide and waited patiently for Kurumi to return with her luggage. She had already said goodbye to Mum and everyone the day before in her chronology – I supposed one day I'd be coming back to usher her there and back – and we were almost all ready to go.

It wasn't like I wouldn't be in this room again the very next day, facing Kurumi again and running through more lessons with her, but it did feel final somehow. I was hardly likely to get any closure when I finally did complete her education, and I supposed that I should take all I could get. I trailed a finger along the rough dusty caulking on the edges of the windows, and held off any action for a few more seconds.

It made the whole complex feel a bit like a playground, and a bit like a huge weight on my shoulders. At some point in time, I'd have to teach myself about how to earn money – I'd have to purchase this land somehow – and keep earning money – to pay for the electricity and water and food. There was a lot more work ahead of me than was behind me, and I already knew that it would last for the better part of my life.

My whole life. Just like that. Whether I had become a time traveller because I was my mother's daughter, or if I had been my mother's daughter because I was a time traveller, was impossible to tell. I'd learnt early on that asking questions about that would just drive you mad, causality was a pain in the bum like that. I was beginning to wonder if self-awareness was even worse than that. I felt like there was very little to look forward to in life, a complete lack of flexibility or joy ahead of me.

But at least I had today. I could be happy for myself, see in my past self the pride and joy that I had earned from all those years studying. I could, looking back on it all, know exactly how hard I had fought, and be proud of myself for that. Give my younger self the words of encouragement and praise that would buoy her up in times of uncertainty.

I picked up the folder that I'd placed on my teacher's desk and curled my fingers around it. It was time to go.

Kurumi's eyes were wide and excited when I met her at her door. I remember being timid and nervous – if happy – but I always forgot how very much like my mother I had looked at that age. How much like her I had felt. I remembered it, now that I saw Kurumi's beaming grin and excited blush; her frazzled hair and tight grip on her luggage. I had been full of fear, yes, but also this delicious excitement and joy. For the first time in my life, not only was this young girl living in a world of fear and terrible supernatural threats, but one in which she was capable and ready and holding her very own TPDD. She was still safe with the crash-net of a teacher and a full agency of other time-travellers, able to trust worrying about anything scary to us, able to feel for the first time awe and pride in her vocation.

My eyes got a little teary as I looked down at her. I took her free hand in my own and led her down the hallway. We travelled to one of the rooms marked as clear for this time-plane and double-checked to make sure she had everything she needed. Then, with a salute and a bow I found myself grinning just as broadly as the kid was, handing over the sealed envelope with her forged personal documents and emergency contact details.

"I... I can hardly believe it," Kurumi stammered, "If Mum could be here... I just... wow. Wow. I'll do well, I promise!"

I nodded emphatically. "You'll do brilliantly," I winked at her and tapped my nose. "Trust me, I know."

We shared a laugh, though she only really got half the joke, and then I stepped back from her, nodded sharply.

"You remember the procedure?"

"Yes, Ma'am!" She was all business and seriousness. I had thought back then that I was coming across as a real mature agent, ready for anything. But I had really, I realised now, looked like a cute kid who was mimicking what she thought the agency was. An official attitude, part of a real team of operatives.

That soured my mood a little, but not for long. I watched as she performed an efficient final check of her gear and stored the sealed envelope safely out of sight. She pulled out her TPDD and frowned as she input the correct co-ordinates from memory, then used the scan function to search the surrounding times and locations for the ideal arrival point. When she had it, she smiled and looked up at me once more before clasping a hand around her gear and pressing a button.

I had never seen myself travel in time before, and it was a strange sight. A strange sensation. I can't describe it, because I couldn't see or hear or feel or taste anything different to normal. It was something that shifted and affected senses that were so deep in my own self-awareness that I have no name for them.

She was gone in that second, of course, and then I was alone in the room. I turned to leave, and was about at the door when I heard footsteps behind me. Which was wholly wrong, because I knew for a fact that the room was booked for that young twelve-year-old Kurumi, and I clearly recalled that I hadn't flubbed that trip. I hadn't come back, I'd found my apartment efficiently and met my handler in that time-plane without any issues at all.

"Ah, oh, wow. There's _two_ of you!"

I... knew that voice. I'd only heard it a few days before, on Saturday, during my poorly thought-out trip back to 2005. I spun on my heels to find myself facing a slightly more tired and harried looking version of myself, clutching at the shoulder of Sasaki. She looked all of nine or ten years old, staring up at me with astonished wide-open eyes.

The harried looking, well, me – she was the right age, was even wearing the same clothes I was – pushed on Sasaki until she got the message and headed shakily across the room towards me. For all the enthusiasm in her voice, the kid seemed pretty unsteady and shocked. As I moved forward to hold on to her arm and then shoulders, my eyes met those of my presumably very near future self. Those eyes so eerily similar to my own blinked once, and then there was a quick movement, the click of a TPDD.

I was alone with Sasaki. She seemed scared, I thought, so I wrapped my arms around her and felt her let her head drop against my shoulder with a soft sob. I knelt there on the floor beside her, ankles cramping and arms clutching, until Sasaki took a deep breath and stepped back. She craned her neck, looking all around the room we were in.

"Where are we?" She asked me, "And why are there two of you?"

I blinked, taken aback by that. "Er, we're at my workplace. And there aren't two of me, not really. Didn't I tell you, before I brought you here? I'm a time traveller."

Sasaki gaped, open-mouthed at me. "No _way_!"

"Ah, er, way. I am one. We are currently in the year 2025. I was born in 2006, and I travelled back in time to attend high school with your brother. Something must have gone wrong, from the looks of it, if you had to be brought here."

"Really? Really really? Is this like how I can make my dolls move when I want them to? I thought I was the only person who could do that, you know!"

I had no idea how to respond to that. I mean seriously, dolls? "I didn't know you could do that." I confessed.

Sasaki seemed more resilient than I had been at her age. She nodded emphatically and let me fuss over her, checking her for any bruises or cuts. As she chattered happily at me, I checked my TPDD, wristwatch and also the computer display in the wall. No notices, no updates, nothing. I was in this on my own for the moment.

"Yeah, I can. Or I could, really. I decided after a while that it was a bit mean, to force my will on others like that."

I decided that we might as well make out way to the cafeteria and get some food into her while I waited for contact from headquarters.

"How old were you, then?"

"Five." She said it dismissively, as if it had been a long time ago. I suppose for her it had been. "But um, I also scared a girl at school with it. So maybe that also had something to do with it. I realised not everyone could do it."

"Yeah, I can believe that. I never did anything like that with my dolls, but then again, I had a pretty busy childhood."

Sasaki followed me along the corridors, and accepted the presence of the tea and biscuits I set down between us quite easily. She crunched on a biscuit and watched me curiously. "You did?"

I laughed, and winked at her. "Well, I tell you what... you can probably guess who my parents are. I mean, you know them. And I was born in 2006."

Sasaki frowned and scratched at a biscuit crumb on her chin, staring with keen attention at my face, hair, eyes. She frowned, and nodded solemnly. "You look like Kyon, you've got that stupid clueless look of his sometimes. Why didn't I see that before?"

I laughed, and shrugged. "I have no idea. I didn't see it in me before. People usually talk about how much like my mother I am."

"Oh, right! That's why you were so busy! I got you now. Wait, so what.. I'm an Aunty? I'm not old enough for that!"

I rolled my eyes. "Can you imagine how weird it was for me, to go back in time and go to school with everyone?"

That thought had Sasaki giggling and shaking her head. "Ahah, that's awful! But, I mean, why am I here? I mean, I was just in school and then she, um, you, grabbed me in the hallway. And now I'm here."

I frowned. "I have no idea. But I had to come back to my own time all of a sudden, when there was an incident with Suzumiya – my Mum – and I heard that you and Kyon both went missing about then too. Maybe something happened, and we had to bring you here to protect you. You are family, after all."

Sasaki thought about that, and we finished our tea in silence. I thought very carefully about what was going on. Sasaki would be ready, in a few years, to be implanted in Junior High, completely aware of her powers and prepared to spend years waiting for something to happen with Suzumiya and Kyon. She had obviously had training. This was where things began to start meeting up in my life perhaps, and knitting together. I had, I supposed, another student.

"How would you like to learn more," I asked her, "about time travellers, ESPers, aliens and omnipotency?"

Sasaki shrugged, but her smile was sweet and happy. "I think I'd like that. It'll be more fun than being left out of everything, anyway."

I nodded in sympathy, and then froze. "Did I – that is, the me that brought you here, my future self – did she tell you about Haruhi before she brought you here? It's odd that she'd tell you about that, but not about time travel or your own capabilities..."

Sasaki shrugged. "Oh, that? I've known about _that_ for years. I mean, Kyon's always muttering to himself, and oh, um... I think I'm supposed to say _Classified Information_ now. Sorry. I think you get told about it later on."

"Classified Information?" My throat caught on the phrase and I had to caution myself. Remind myself that I needed to be very careful here. I wasn't anywhere near close to understanding all the sealed information regarding Kyon's disappearance, or knowing what else had been happening in that time-plane outside my own concerns, and pushing Sasaki wouldn't help any of us. I shook my head and forced a smile out.

"Of course. I understand. For the moment, then, I'll just check in with my superiors. There's probably been a room arranged for you."

I checked the room's computer display, and sure enough there had been an update regarding Sasaki. She was to be situated in a different dormitory block than my younger self. That was relieving, as it meant that I wouldn't have to launch right into the importance of maintaining a low profile onto the poor confused looking girl. But there was more in the bulletin. My schedule had been updated, and I was now to be a teacher to two students; my younger self and Sasaki.

I hadn't been trained for this. I had gone through years of studying causality and temporality and human psychology and science. I had never been trained to teach, or to counsel or help others. There hadn't been the time in my curriculum for it. I knew for a fact that I never had any classmates at the agency, so I'd probably be drafting all new lesson plans and working to make schedules fit. I despaired of having adequate sleep ever again in my life.

But none of that was Sasaki's fault, really. The poor girl still didn't have a clear idea of why she was there with me. I hadn't been helping her at all, getting so caught up in my own concerns. I scrubbed the palms of my hands against the sides of my skirt and hoped that I wasn't too sweaty with nerves when I took her hand in my own for the second time that day, to lead her down the hallway to her bedroom.

I opened and shut my mouth several times, trying to figure out what to say. Should I start with closed spaces and the threats to reality, or by summarising my own life's story? Perhaps I should bring in Aunt Yuki and have her synchronise with her past self, so that I could refresh my own knowledge of what we had and had not exposed Sasaki to during her childhood. I had so many thoughts swimming around in my head that what I actually said in the end came as a complete surprise to both of us.

"Have you heard the story of Tanabata?"

Sasaki blinked up at me. "Sure I have. Everyone has."

I hadn't even expected myself to come out with that, and I had no idea what Sasaki made of it. I wasn't sure how to follow that up, or how to explain it. After a few steps together in silence I shrugged and tried to brush it off with a smile. "Sorry, I've just been thinking about folklore and legends and stories recently," I hadn't really of course, "and that just popped out. Tanabata's pretty special to Mum, you see. And Kyon, I think. I hope. Maybe."

Sasaki nodded thoughtfully, though it was obvious she had no idea what I was going on about, and that she thought I was just a little bit mad. "Right."

I didn't leave her alone in the room, but went in and showed her around. I sat on the edge of her new standard issue mattress while I watched her poke around. I felt like I had something that I needed to apologise for.

"I'm sorry," I said, "I think I've seen you in a few different time-planes, all in the wrong order, and it's a bit overwhelming. Here I am, supposed to be taking care of you, and..."

Sasaki, a far more sympathetic and kind girl than I myself had ever been, laid a comforting hand on my knee. She wriggled up onto the mattress beside me, and nodded with the wisdom of youth. "It's okay. I mean, everyone has bad days, no matter how important their jobs are. People make mistakes. You're doing fine."

I blinked away tears that I hadn't noticed collecting in my eyes and frowned down at her. "You sound like you're reading from some sort of induction manual or staff morale white-paper."

Sasaki shrugged and swung her legs, kicking them against the base of the bed. "Well, what can I say? I go – um, I mean, went – to a Japanese primary school. I've been surrounded by that sort of thing."

"I don't believe that tone of yours," I told her, "you really meant it, didn't you? You're really something special and rare, you know? I don't think I've ever met anyone like you in my life."

Sasaki blushed and turned away. She stared down at the floor, her hair hiding her expression from me. When she spoke, she sounded like she was trying very hard indeed to be stern. She couldn't hide her pride and embarrassment from me, though. "Nieces should know their places, and take advice from their elders."

I laughed, warming and feeling like the day was going to turn out all right after all, when my wristwatch beeped and my heart fell. I checked quickly to see that I was being requested quite urgently in 2005, about the same time as my mission termination.

I squeezed Sasaki's shoulder, and winked at her. "I've got to go pick someone up, I think. I'll just drop my charge off about an hour ago, and be right back. Okay?"

I walked briskly down the corridor. I intended to get a safe distance away from Sasaki before I went back in time. I was worried about the risks involved; that time-plane seemed to be central to everything in my life, and it also seemed very dangerous. I would need to be alert and ready and on the ball the whole time.

I grit my teeth against my own insecurities and forced them down. I knew I'd get through this job because I'd seen it happen. I didn't have to trust to the knowledge of my superiors, my future selves on this one; I could be secure in the knowledge that my current self was up to the task.


	16. Chapter 16

**2014, A Café, Tokyo; 2014, Tsuruya Residence, Tokyo**

I had known for some time that I would have to fulfil the recursive necessity of my induction into the agency, but I had been more concerned about presenting a fresh and welcoming face for my younger self and about whether or not the TPDD would work – if it was just an external aid for my own powers, how much suggestion would I need? - than I was about the hardest task of all. For a woman who had spent her entire life chasing down and being enthralled with the supernatural, Haruhi Suzumiya was much harder to convince of my identity as a time traveller than many of the other people in my life had been.

Hell, Kyon had been dead-set on denying the strange and unusual, but he'd taken me at my word. He'd absorbed my information and though he'd put up a façade of scepticism, he had trusted me and accepted my role in his life with equanimity. Compared to him, trying to convince Haruhi that I really was a time traveller and that I really did represent a large organisation was almost a full-time job.

I had been dubious of my orders when I'd been sent to this time-plane a week early, but now I knew why. When it came to her daughter, Haruhi was like a brick wall. I had approached her at work, had bought her lunches, had set out pamphlets and documents and rational explanations on tables before her. I had hinted that I might be able to reveal the nature of time travel itself to her. She, with a stern glare, had eaten the food I had bought and collected the papers and pamphlets into a tidy pile, and said quite succinctly that Kurumi was going to go to the same school that her mother had gone to, thank you very much, and that the Suzumiyas were not interested in cult activities in that way, no matter what the show's publicity sound bites may suggest.

She said it not with anger, but with resolute long-suffering familiarity. I wondered, as I watched her watching me suspiciously over a cup of coffee one lunch break, how many other nutjobs she had encountered like that. If she'd been brushing off idiots and fanatical weirdos my whole life, and I'd never known. I'd always assumed her job was all fun and indulgence, never that she was being exhausted and beset upon like this. She'd never shown this world-weariness at home.

I sighed, and bit my lip. What to do? I knew I had introduced myself under an assumed name, Mizuyasu Miruku – and what a terrible anagram that was! - but perhaps the time had come to give it up. Maybe if I could get Haruhi to recognise me as Mikuru, then I'd be able to convince her at least of the veracity of my occupation.

The other alternative was actually taking her along on a trip through time, and I wasn't too sure if I wanted to risk that. Who knew what she'd do if she was encouraged in that way; closed spaces might be the very least of our problems after that.

I had let my mind drift. Haruhi was making bored and irritated noises opposite me, her drink cold and forgotten. I sipped my own politely, but I couldn't hide a grimace at the lukewarm and bitter taste of it.

"It's just not the same without everyone else, is it?" Haruhi sounded more wistful than resistant, and her eyes were focused somewhere in the distance, outside the café window.

"What isn't?" I asked. I felt a flutter of fear in my chest, a very normal reaction to a change in Haruhi's mood.

"This. I mean, it's not just that we're down to two members of the S.O.S Brigade. It's that bastard Kyon! He left about the same time you did, you know? And who's supposed to pay for lunch when he's not here? What's happened to the idea of chivalry?"

She ended her rant with her hands raised, and she emphasised the point by slapping her hands down on the table so that our drinks sloshed out of our cups and everything rattled about.

"I... what? You knew it was me?"

Haruhi snorted. "Of course I knew it was you, Mikuru. What do you take me for, an idiot? Who else would go missing for years in suspicious circumstances and then show up pretending they were a time traveller? Only a member of the S.O.S Brigade would have the gall to pull a stunt like that."

She sounded, if it was at all possible, proud of me. I stared at her, and after a few seconds of shock remembered where I was and what I was supposed to be doing.

"No, really, I am one. That's where I went, when I disappeared. I went back, er, to the..."

Oh, I couldn't say it. I couldn't make such a lame pop culture reference at such a pivotal moment in my life. I distracted myself by using a napkin to sop up some of the mess on the table.

"I went to junior high school in the year 5011. I um, didn't come from then, though. That was just, you know... student exchange? And then I travelled into what was for me the past to attend senior high school with you."

Haruhi frowned at me, and raised an eyebrow. "You know? There's something about you that makes me want to believe you, but I just can't. It's only your word I've got, even if the words do come from the lovely lips of my dearly missed mascot."

Panic rose in my throat. I really hadn't wanted to fall back on the dangerous and stupid plan of taking her through time. But then what other choice did I have? I only had a scant few days left now before my deadline, and I couldn't take any risks. I had to make sure that my past self entered the agency, or...

Or what? I had suspicions regarding some events in my own past, and I knew that I had helped nudge Kyon along the right path at some points in his life. But what was really so bad about failure? What would happen if I did not become a time traveller? Sasaki hadn't made that many closed spaces herself, so there was a good chance I wouldn't either. Right? Right. And the only real difference would be that I studied in my natural chronology rather than hopping around everywhere. Instead of being shoehorned into this career and lifestyle, I might have a chance at finding an occupation I enjoyed. Of course there could be bad results. If I did not go back in time to influence Kyon and Haruhi, then perhaps I would never have been born.

But I had been taught acceptance and stoicism and passive observance by the agency. Humans, all humans, had to die sometime. Sometimes my actions or the actions of others would cause entire time-planes to destabilise or change. Nothing, not even the hard points in the Ideal Timeline, really mattered in that sense. If I was not a time traveller, the world would not be a better or worse place on the whole. It might be better or worse on a case-by-case, person-by-person basis. But on the whole, life would be life.

I had almost thought myself into giving up on it all. Not out of exhaustion or depression, but simply acceptance that causality was strange and something I barely understood with my mental capabilities. Resigned and calm, I was simply going to enjoy the rest of my lunch with Haruhi and then go home to the agency. See what might happen, when I failed at a mission so central to my own existence.

But Haruhi didn't seem to want to enjoy my company. She stood and waved, eyes bright and mouth calling out a greeting to some passer-by on the street. I couldn't catch a glimpse of them, but behind my shoulder the door to the café swung open and I heard the wait staff welcome the newcomers. Two shadows – one much shorter than the other – fell across the mess of our table.

"Hey, Yuki-chan! Sit down, guess who I've got here!"

I didn't need to turn my head to see who it was. The frown on Haruhi's face was enough to let me know that it wasn't Aunt Yuki who stood beside us, but Nagato Yuki. I could also guess who was with her; Sasaki. I felt a bit defeated. There I had been, ready to see what happened when a time travelling secret agent tested fate, and I obviously would soon be skipping back in time to set up this convenient proof of my powers.

"Suzumiya, Asahina." Nagato stood still and silent, wearing her old high school uniform. I kept my eyes on Haruhi, whose mouth was opening and shutting again. I crossed my fingers underneath the table and hoped that Haruhi wasn't observant enough to notice that Nagato was physically an adult. I could guess what had happened – after my visit here I would take a quick trip back to earlier today, and press Aunt Yuki and Sasaki into helping out. I sighed with exasperation at my own convoluted plan.

Sasaki giggled, and thankfully made a distraction out of herself. Nagato moved to tidy the table for us with mechanical movements, and Sasaki scrambled to drag some chairs over.

"You're... Kyon's sister, right?" I'd never heard Haruhi sound so astonished before. It made her seem younger and smaller and vulnerable, something that was incredibly creepy coming from her. "But you shouldn't be so young. I mean, you should at least be... what, eighteen years old, now?"

Sasaki shrugged, and I clasped my hands before me. I nodded my thanks to Nagato as she finished her task and sat down, pulling a book out of her jacket pocket and beginning to read.

"We, er, had to bring her out of time, to protect her. She's currently under my guardianship."

Haruhi gaped. She clenched her teaspoon in a tight fist. "And... and... Kyon? He's with you, too?"

My heart broke inside me. The hope and fear in her voice, the way her face turned pale and solemn as she began to understand the truth – that I was really a time traveller – made me want to say that yes, Kyon was with us. Safe and sound, and accounted for.

I couldn't. I didn't even have to say a thing, she could tell it just from looking at my face. Unable to meet her eyes, I turned my head to stare through prickling hot teary eyes at the cover of Nagato's book.

"Oh." She sounded so small, so bereft and alone... and I could not do or say anything to help her. Sasaki moved to hug her tightly, and I should have been gathering myself and focusing on the task at hand, but all I could do was wonder exactly how much information Nagato had had about the future. Whether she'd known it all all along, and hadn't been able to do anything. Whether that had anything to do with the blank expression on her face.

"Kurumi," I said once I had managed to force myself back into a professional frame of mind, "we need her. We have to train her. She'll be a capable time traveller and she will never give up on Kyon. I cannot see how things will eventuate, but I know that if anyone can find Kyon, it will be her."

I spoke with a confidence I did not feel. I wasn't just trying to convince Haruhi or make her feel better, I was re-affirming that commitment I had made all those years ago in my childhood. I would do all I could to find and help Kyon. I wouldn't break any rules or risk the universe, but I would work my arse off to find him.

Haruhi met my eyes, and nodded sharply. "All right. Fine. I... oh wow. Talk about recursion!"

I blinked, confused at the sudden change in topic. "Recursion?"

Haruhi shrugged. "I ended up naming you after, well, you. You grow up well, Kurumi."

I gaped. "You _knew_? I mean, I had no idea! All those years, when I was training, and you sent me off to Miss Miruku every week... you _knew?_"

Haruhi shrugged and laughed, a little sadly. "Well I know now, don't I? So I guess, yeah."

She let go of the spoon, and reached her hand across the table to me. I clutched at it, feeling so strange to be before the woman who was just like my mother, and yet so young and resembling the friend of my youth.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. I gave Haruhi copies of the paperwork, and tested the phone connections so that she could contact the agency in synchronisation with her own time-plane and my past chronology. I shepherded Sasaki back to her dorm room and conveyed my thanks to Nagato with a polite inquiry as to when I was about to go back in time to. Hey, it never hurts to ask, and sometimes it can save a whole lot of chasing up loose ends.

I jumped around time, I collected Aunt Yuki and Sasaki, I explained it all to them, and then there I was, watching Nagato and Sasaki walk down the street towards a café in Tokyo in 2014. I didn't really want to watch, or go back to the agency in 2025 to debrief Sasaki. I wasn't ready to be alone, either. I set out to just walk and exist for a while in the crowds of the city, but very soon I was walking with purpose towards my neighbourhood.

Though I haven't spoken much of Tsuruya in my life, she had been my friend for years. To describe such a non-linear and confusing relationship as ours, that would take more words and time than I currently have to spare. The best I can do is say that from the day I was inducted into the agency as a child, Tsuruya has been there for me. As an adult in my chronology, as a classmate in her own, and in many other ways besides. Her family was caught up in the agency too somehow, and she'd always been aware of time travel. She'd always known about me, and so when I felt lost or alone or depressed I often found my way to her family compound.

I hadn't even had the time to raise my hand to knock on the door before it opened. Tsuruya was grinning, her mouth open on the verge of exclaiming something, but one look at me and her lips closed together so fast that her teeth clicked. Her hands closed comfortingly around my shoulders and I was ushered through the motions of removing my shoes, making my way down a corridor, sitting down on a cushion in the corner of her bedroom.

"What the hell happened to you?"

I sighed and picked up a bean-filled handsewn toy from her windowsill. I'd only made it a year ago, but it was faded in this time-plane from almost two decades of wear and tear.

"Nothing really. It shouldn't be that shocking or upsetting, not compared to everything else, I mean..."

"What shouldn't? Anyway, different rules apply to time travellers. Got all sorts of weird things to catch up with, I bet."

I scratched at my scalp, fingers itching and feeling like they weren't my own. "Maybe? I don't know. I just... I learned today that Mum always knew it was me. Well not always, but you know? She knew about a lot of things before I did. It's just a bit... weird."

Tsuruya nodded. She really was incredible, as a person. She had this ever present vigour and energy, but whenever I needed a strong silent shoulder to cry on or a willing ear, she was suddenly all patience and love. Right then she was nodded and making sympathetic murmurs. She sat down beside me, and gently pulled my hands away from my head.

"I can imagine."

I stared at my fingers as they lay limp in my lap. I shook my head slightly. "No, actually, that isn't it. It was odd at the time, but it's more what I was thinking about earlier on. And some other stuff. What if I never joined the agency, never went back in time, never interfered. Would Kyon still be around? What does all this have to do with my family, and with the world at large? Why do so many people _care _about what happens to Haruhi and Kyon?"

"Shh."

I had become a little agitated in my rant, and Tsuruya was doing her best to calm me down. My head felt dense. Too heavy on my neck. I ached all over.

"Who am I?" I bit my lip, and pinched my fingers together. They didn't feel like they belonged to me. "I mean, I have all these names... but what happens if I change my own past? Am I still me? Will I be me? And if I never exist... if Haruhi made closed spaces and changed the whole world a thousand times over... if none of this happens, does it even matter?"

I cried then, feeling all the tension of the last few days bleeding out of me. All the pain burning out in heaving sobs. Tsuruya's strong arms around me were the only stable things in the universe. She rocked with me, making soothing noises. I'm not sure how much time passed before I was lying down, coming down from my panic and sorrow as I curled into a ball in the middle of Tsuruya's bed.

She sat on the floor beside me, a warm hand on my arm. She was frowning into the distance as I regained my focus, and when she spoke her voice sounded a little tense. "I'm not sure if this is the right way or time to tell ya, but I think it's important. So listen up."

I was all ears. Tsuruya lay down and I straightened out, so we were parallel beside each other and staring up at the ceiling.

"So you know that I know some stuff about you, and your family. I know a bit more about some things than you do. I know when Kyon and Haruhi met, and I know a bit about them."

"You mean, when they were children? I read something about that in a report once, I think."

Tsuruya waggled her fingers in the air and shrugged. She let her arms flop back down onto the floor. "Dunno. I guess so. But the most important thing to know here? Is that this sort of stuff runs in the family. I bet your files mentioned something about transference, right? Between them?"

I frowned as I tried to remember. Usually my augmented recall was impeccable, but I was all jumbled with emotions. "I think so, yes?" I really wasn't sure.

"Right. So what you know yourself is that you can travel in time, Haruhi and Sasaki can make closed spaces. Koizumi can defeat what's in the closed spaces. Nagato... is just Nagato. I'm not sure anyone can really explain her."

"Yeah, okay. I'm with you." The familiar knowledge grounded me a bit, though I wondered why she had brought Koizumi and Nagato into the picture.

"So the only person who is odd, and that you don't know anything about, is Kyon."

"Huh. You know? I'd never really thought about him much in that way." I rolled onto my side to face her. "I mean, I've been fixated on how and why he disappeared, partly blaming myself. I've never really thought much about whether or not I've seen any evidence of his having powers or abilities."

Tsuruya hmm-ed and rolled on her own side to face me. With an exaggerated wink, she raised a finger to her lips and said, "He connects everything."

I blinked. I didn't understand. Tsuruya laughed and smiled broadly, nodding as if I wasn't lying there looking completely baffled.

"Exactly, my dear Kurumi! Think about it... there's more than one way for metaphysical powers to manifest. Closed spaces, time travel... why not connectivity?"

I let the idea sink into my mind. "You mean, he kept us all together? The S.O.S Brigade and Sasaki and everyone?"

Tsuryua shrugged. "Why not? I mean, you're too used to thinking of things as they relate to your job and your non-linear lifestyle. What if things happened chronologically? What if you were born as Kurumi because Kyon wanted you – Mikuru – to be there with everyone?"

"I think... this is a bit too hypothetical for me right now..." I said slowly. Tsuruya agreed with me readily enough and was her cheerful self within a few seconds, but her words stayed with me for the rest of my life. Sometimes Tsuruya accidentally leaked information to me – sometimes deliberately – that it might have taken me years to come across. I suspected my own future hand in many of the occasions, and Tsuruya's own generous heart in many others. If she was hinting carefully that Kyon may have had powers that affected the interconnectivity of people, it might explain the ways that all of our lives had been intertwining throughout time and space over the years. I fell asleep in the Tsuruya residence that evening, having sent a message to the agency that I would return once I had woken to resume my duties. I didn't feel completely stable, but I certainly had something new to discuss with Aunt Yuki and Uncle Itsuki.


	17. Chapter 17

**2035, Suzumiya Residence, Tokyo; 2005, North Senior High School, Tokyo; 2005, Suou Residence, Tokyo**

Ten years can hold a lot, but when you've got about ten years worth of teaching your past self to catch up on it can go by in a flash. There was the occasional mission or adventure to be had, but they are stories for another time. All that I really did was teach classes and spend time with Sasaki when she began to feel isolated or lonely. Since I had fewer secrets to keep from Sasaki than I did my past self, even that was diluted; all the former members of the S.O.S Brigade took the time to visit and spend time with her.

I had the luxury that day of an afternoon off; Sasaki had left to go shopping and my younger self was studying hard for her exams. I was at home, feeling fresh after a quick shower and trying to decide whether I should get the weekly shopping out of the way or not. It would free up the weekend for more enjoyable activities, and I did hate the crowds. Since grocery shopping had become my chore over the years, I had been learning how to time and organise myself a little better in that respect. It helped give structure to my temporally confusing lifestyle.

I had half composed a list in my head – lettuce, cucumbers, ham, bread, tomato sauce – when entirely unexpectedly my TPDD and wristwatch beeped. I hadn't heard that particular code in a long time. It was an emergency summons. I forgot all about housework and errands and sat down at the kitchen table. The emergency wasn't in my time-plane, and it was better practise to be familiar with as much information as possible before acting. Hasty thoughtless reaction was one of the biggest mistakes of my youth, and I was vigilant about never making it again.

I had expected it for some time now, and it wasn't really a surprise when I read the details. 2005, the year that my first big mission had ended. Twenty years ago now, though it hadn't been anywhere near that long in my own chronology. I had a good idea of what I needed to do, but I brushed up on the particulars just in case.

I decided, with a smile, that I'd leave a note. Get Mum to order dinner in, so that I could take my time coming home and not worry about anything other than my work. Then for old time's sake I held my TPDD and closed my eyes. I took a deep breath, and let the disorienting chaos of time travel seep through me.

When I opened my eyes again, I was standing in the corridor outside the S.O.S Brigade clubroom. I could hear noises inside the classroom, and then out burst Suzumiya. She didn't seem upset, but nauseated. It was a key sign that I had missed the first few times I'd been in this time-plane. One hand covering her mouth, she sprinted away from me to the girls' bathroom. I walked calmly towards the open clubroom door, making sure I was quiet as possible and out of sight from those inside.

I didn't really need to worry, though. Everyone was too caught up in their own thoughts. Kyon came barrelling out of the room, and I caught hold of his wrist. I ran alongside him for a few seconds, so that he didn't fall flat on his face. Luckily he noticed me, turned his head and slowed down. His confusion was obvious.

"...Miss Asahina, is that you? I don't think I've ever seen you this old before... anyway, I've got to go, Haruhi's..."

I shook my head sharply, and tugged so that we ended up in an empty clubroom. The photography club were outside that afternoon, and we'd be safe there for what time we needed. "Haruhi's busy throwing up," I told him, "she won't notice you even if you chased her, and then she'd probably beat you up for following her into the toilets. She can wait."

I felt my throat tighten a little when I said those words. It was callous of me; here I was, with a stable and happy life, about to condemn both Suzumiya and Kyon to nothing but loss and grief. But it had to be done.

"Kyon, I know this is sudden, but I need you to listen to me. Really listen. The universe depends on this."

He bit his lip, obviously more worried about Suzumiya than the universe. But I had his attention. I took a deep breath, and smoothed my hands down on my jeans, very glad I hadn't changed into a skirt after my shower.

"Haruhi has what is most commonly known as morning sickness." I told him. Kyon froze, shocked. I nodded slowly, and took his clammy hands in mine.

"She's pregnant, Kyon. And I need you to come with me right now. I'll explain it more soon, I promise. But for the moment, there's too much at risk. This is a very sensitive moment in time, and we have to get you clear of the school grounds before anything else happens. Trust me?"

Kyon seemed distant and distracted, but he nodded. I listened carefully at the door for Koizumi's hurried footsteps, which were soon followed by my own past slow dejected ones. Nagato did not move, but I remembered that she had been very occupied in her task and probably would not notice us. I had refreshed my knowledge of the school layout while waiting, and with quick sure steps I led Kyon through the corridors and out through one of the less commonly used entrances. The side gate shut behind us securely, I took him to a nearby predetermined street and waited. Simply waited. I hoped that Tachibana's organisation was as efficient as Koizumi's had been.

Sure enough, a discreet and generic model of car pulled up to the kerb. The rear windows were tinted, and only when we were very close could we see Tachibana waving out at us.

I think it wasn't until then that the true gravity of what was happening sunk in for Kyon. He looked back at me, alarmed.

"We're getting in this car, Kyon." I couldn't smile. I wondered how much of it he'd figured out already. Judging from the unpleasant twist to his mouth, he'd got the gist of it. We got in the car.

"So you know much about labour, when a woman gives birth?" I didn't like discussing anything that involved my head and my Mum's genitals, and I was hoping I could get away with just suggesting at the truth.

"I guess so?" Kyon seemed to be oblivious. "But I don't care about that... what's happening? You – my Asahina -"

And oh how those words cut into my heart, even with my age and wisdom. It still felt a little like rejection.

"My Asahina – was just saying that you're about to be called back into your own time-plane?"

My shoulders slumped. I would have to breach the topic with him, after all. "Yes," I answered him to stall for time, though I could tell from Tachibana's frown that she thought I should just get it all over with. "Yes, you won't see your Asahina again. When you do, she won't be Asahina. That was just... a code name, you know? The next time you meet her, you'll know her real name."

Kyon frowned, and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I see."

"What is more important right now – we'll have time to discuss Asahina later – is that this is also the last day you will see Haruhi Suzumiya."

_That_ got him interested. He stared at me, clutched at my arm. His face turned a little red, furious. "This has something to do with Koizumi, right? I should have hit that bastard harder!"

I couldn't say anything, I hadn't really talked to Uncle Itsuki about _that_, and even if I had, I had the feeling that now wouldn't be the time to offer Kyon any insights into Koizumi's motives and issues. Kyon slumped back against the car set, and rubbed his hand over his face.

"I can't, you know? I can't leave her. I just... I used to think, you know, how easy life would be without her. But I can't go. And you said, she's pregnant? I'm not leaving any child of mine with _her_ for a mother. I mean, I might love her but I'm not an idiot! No way could she raise a kid by herself."

I bit my tongue, torn between indignant loyalty for my mother and extended family, and amusement over the whole situation. Kyon had seemed to think that Asahina had turned out just fine, after all.

"Yes, all right. I understand your concern. But you have to understand something yourself, Kyon. Haruhi is still creating closed spaces. Less since the beginning of your secret affair, far less since you began having intercourse," and that of course had been more mission information than I really had needed, "but she is still creating them. Have you heard many accounts of what happens during labour?"

Kyon winced, and shrugged. "It hurts, right? And can go on for hours?"

Tachibana rolled her eyes. "My Dad says that Mum spent the whole time she was in labour – all twenty hours of it – screaming curses and wishing he was dead. They had to strap her arms down, or she'd have tried to cut his penis off."

I think Kyon and I both grimaced at that. "Well I think my own Mum had a slightly easier time of it," I confessed, "but regardless, there is a strong likelihood that when Haruhi gives birth to her child, that she could wish both her unborn child and you into non-existence."

Kyon blinked, obviously not understanding. "But... she loves me. She'd never do that."

"You," I told him viciously, "have never had period cramps."

Tachibana leant across me and nodded emphatically. "Imagine," she said, "that you have the most painful stomach pain you've ever had. Like, gastroenteritis bad. It's a muscle cramp, that hurts more than most pain you can get, for some people. And it can last anywhere from a second to an hour. When some girls have their periods, it doesn't just last until you've shat out the bacteria or had medicine or whatever, it lasts all week, on and off. And happens once every month."

Kyon looked a little ill at that. But Tachibana pressed onwards. She was an ESPer, and I deferred to her judgement on it; she was more likely than I to know how to get the point through to Kyon.

"Well labour involves the same muscles, but instead of happening slowly over a few days, it's all at once. And a child? Is way bigger to expel than menstrual blood. It's like quivering, aching, bleeding and tearing pain in your stomach, and it can last for _days_. While you push out something as large as a watermelon. And that's with an easy labour."

Now Kyon really did look sick, but he also looked scared. "And that's... going to happen to Haruhi?"

I sighed. I took his hands in mine, because the poor boy – and he was _so young_, it was so strange – seemed to need some sort of comfort. We all were pressed up against each other as the car took another corner.

"Maybe. We've had Nagato and Suou processing data for a while now. Our best bet is to do the following: we must assume that Haruhi's labour _will_ be that bad, and act to protect everyone that we can. You, Haruhi... um, and your child. I don't know of any future other than the one we're about to create, and I know that your daughter will live. Predictions for other circumstances if you stay are far less positive."

Kyon swallowed. "My... daughter?"

"Ah, sorry. I shouldn't have let that slip out." I shrugged and winked at him. "That is very nearly classified information, though not quite I suppose. We have to remove you to make sure that Haruhi develops protective feelings for her child. If you stay, she may very well wish you and the unborn infant into non-existence. Being alone in the world will make her fiercely protective of your child. It will protect all three of you."

Kyon nodded slowly. "Forgive me, but this is a bit much to take in."

I nodded, keeping my smile as even as I could. "I understand. That's why we came here now, instead of in a few months time. To talk to you, as well as to give Haruhi time to reach a stable mental state."

I felt a little awkward, then. Kyon obviously was going through a very emotional time, but this was all so far in my own past, so distant from my own experiences that I couldn't really sympathise with him. I knew he'd make the right – the only – decision he could make. In any case, we had arrived in the underground parking space that belonged to Suou Kuyou's apartment. I detached my hands from Kyon's and nodded once to Tachibana. She would sort out her business with the chauffeur while I took Kyon up to meet the others.

The trip up in the lift took a long time, and I shifted awkwardly on my feet beside him. I breathed in in relief when we finally got out and moved to knock at the door. It was opened by Suou, who stared blankly at us before turning abruptly on her heel and moving stiffly into the apartment. We followed her.

Sasaki came into view almost immediately. She rose from where she sat on a small bean bag – what an odd piece of furniture for a data-based entity to have – and smiling, wrapped her arms around me.

"Kurumi! It's been too long, I think? How old are you now?"

I rolled my eyes and shook my finger at her. "You should know better than to ask that sort of question."

Sasaki turned from me to Kyon, and cocked her head to the side. "How have you been, Kyon?"

Kyon shrugged, seemed a little awkward and taken aback. "Fine, I suppose, Sasaki. So is everyone working together on this, then?"

I exchanged an exasperated look with Sasaki. Kyon very obviously did not recognise his sister. Though to his credit, we had gone out of our way years before to establish her cover story. When I had been in the S.O.S Brigade, we had helped her infiltrate his social circles and reconnect with him. It was hardly his fault, all the conspiring we had done to bring us safely to this point in our lives.

"No, I'm just here to help bring you along. Haruhi will need support to be a single mother, and you'll need to be as safe as we can make you from the effects of closed spaces. It's better if Nagato and Koizumi have no knowledge of your whereabouts, and that's where Tachibana and Suou come in. Sasaki's going to be the most important, with her white closed spaces. But Fujiwara is key."

The glowering young man, much more familiar to me now, looked up abruptly. I did my best to keep the smile from my face. Kyon turned to regard him expectantly.

"How? I mean, I understand how all the others cancel out the S.O.S Brigade's powers, but if Asahina isn't here anymore-

"It won't be enough to simply cancel things out," I interrupted, "we have to send you as far away as we can. As far away as Fujiwara can. His... organisation... has more advanced capabilities than my own currently. We are going to send you very far back in time."

I took in Kyon's terrified face, and I could hear the question in his head as clearly as if I was an ESPer myself. _How far is that?_

"I'll give you some time for it to all sink in. Would you like some tea?"

Kyon nodded. He'd never said no to my tea. I'd had Sasaki make sure there was some available just for that reason. While Tachibana and Fujiwara discussed something together, Suou sitting beside them woodenly, I headed into the kitchen with Sasaki fast on my heels. Kyon looked adrift and lost, standing there in the middle of the room.

Sasaki burst into laughter as soon as we were out of sight. I was what counted as the oldest person in the whole affair in that time-plane, and so I fixed a disapproving gaze on my biological Aunt.

"Now, it's hardly fair. I know he's an absolute knob at times, but you're going to have to live with him for the next two decades or so. Don't be too quick to bruise his ego."

Sasaki stifled her laughter, but her eyes still twinkled. She elbowed me in the side. "Don't treat your ancestors so disrespectfully, girl!"

I put the kettle on and rolled my eyes. "Yes, Aunty."

Sasaki leant against the kitchen bench as I measured the tea and waited for the water to be the right temperature.

"So, how does it all turn out? Can I have some hints?"

I frowned. "You know I can't tell you much. But your trip will be very finite. As soon as things are stable, as soon as possible, we bring you back. I promise you. You'll end up enjoying that time-plane more than you think you will, so don't be too quick to try to get back."

Sasaki leaned in towards me, eyes glittering with intelligence and curiousity. She'd always been an exemplary student of mine – faster than I had been at times to catch on to things and always better at maths – and I could tell she was using her knowledge of me to try and see more hints of her own fate just by observing my reactions.

"And that's all I can tell you, honest." I shrugged and smiled, hoped that I hadn't got any really obvious tics or fidgety tells. I could taste the words _classified information_ on the tip of my tongue, ready to come tumbling out automatically thanks to my wetware and programming. Thankfully, before she could ask any more questions Kyon came into the kitchen.

He looked sheepish, exhausted, depressed. I suppose I'd feel the same, if I was facing that sort of circumstance in my life. Maybe I _had_ looked like it, all those years ago. Looking into Kyon's eyes made me feel like a toddler again. Wrapped up in Mum's arms, cradled gently as she carried me home. That sudden realisation of loss and bereavement.

"I was wondering if it had sunken in yet or not." I explained. The tea was done, so I handed him a cup. Sasaki excused herself to go discuss technical details with her associates, and I was alone with Kyon.

"So I get to meet you again," he said into his teacup, "who else do I get to see again? I mean, who _don't_ I get to see again?"

I cleared my throat and nodded. "Well, as far as I know, you meet everyone again one day. Maybe not all your old classmates, but your friends, certainly. And your family. You get reunited with your family."

"With Haruhi, and our daughter."

I couldn't look him in the face, right then. It wasn't my place. I'd be going home in the evening to a happy warm home, but that evening was too many years in his own future. I was at a complete loss as to how to handle the situation. Perhaps it was a bit cruel of me, but I was saying the words before I was even aware I'd made the decision to use them as a deflection.

"And your parents, of course."

Kyon blinked, frowned. "But what about... Sasaki. I mean, not, this Sasaki. My sister, she..." He stopped talking, blinked, and stared at me. Then he rubbed a hand over his eyes. "No way."

I shrugged. "I'm afraid that there's things about your own family that you didn't know, Kyon. Sasaki's powers were so important to saving you that we recruited her, er, today I think." I checked my wristwatch. "In half an hour or so. Given that it would save your life she will have agreed. And has. Though we would have had to induct her forcefully if she declined; untrained, she may have turned out just as dangerous as Haruhi."

It was a bit of a lie, but a white one. And Kyon was so innocent of awareness. Once Sasaki and everyone had settled into their time period and had time to explain things in depth... then there would be time to understand and tell the whole truth.

"I... I see. I'm glad she's taken care of, I guess? Though I feel like a really bad brother, if I didn't recognise her all these years."

I was on safer ground here; I could speak from my own experiences without fear or caution. "Believe me, when you expect to see someone who is five or ten or eleven years old... you don't associate them with the image of a fifteen year old or eighteen year old. And once you get used to that idea, you don't notice the similarities, because there are far more differences. Time can change a lot of things."

Kyon sighed at that. He smiled weakly at me. "I understand that, but still... I should have known it was her. Should have taken more care of her. She must have been so isolated..."

Sasaki could be heard raising her voice in the other room, reprimanding Fujiwara for being so grumpy. "Or maybe not," I said, "remember that time isn't always linear or synchronous for everyone. I've been looking out for her."

Kyon looked at me, really looked at me, then. He opened his mouth as if to say something, so I pushed ahead with something important. I'd figured it out, finally, though it had come in slow stages throughout my adult life. The real importance of this all.

"Tanabata." I said.

Kyon's mouth closed, and he frowned. "Is this like that first time with Haruhi in the closed space? Another fairytale?"

I shook my head. "Not at all. That time, you had to remember a story, and it was more a clue than anything else. This time? You'll... well, you'll be travelling in time as well as into augmented reality. In your destination, the story of Tanabata will not yet exist."

Kyon absorbed what I had said. I wondered if I would need to explain it more thoroughly, but he set his half-empty teacup to the side and was nodding. "Yet. _Yet_. So I'm... I hardly remember it. How am I supposed to tell it properly?"

I shrugged. "I imagine this works somewhat like many of my own missions. You will tell the story in the right way, because you already have. I'm sorry that I can't help more than that. My only job here was really to bring you to this apartment, and transfer you to Sasaki's group. I should be going now."

As if on cue, my assorted devices punctuated my words with sharp beeping. I didn't check them, I knew what the message was. I clasped my hand on Kyon's shoulder, and shook hands with all of Sasaki's team. I wrapped my arms around my biological aunt, who had only known me so far as an older aunty-type teacher herself.

I knew, was perfectly aware that everything turned out just fine. But it didn't stop the tears from burning in my eyes as I raised a hand in lame farewell on the threshold. I had said all my goodbyes, but as I turned to leave Kyon was chasing after me. His hand clutched at my arm, and I twisted on my heel to look at him. I was honestly startled; he'd looked dejected and resolute, but now he was full of this desperate energy. Was he about to try and beg to stay? Was he going to endanger all our lives?

"You have her eyes!"

My heartbeat stopped in my chest. I knew that other people had said it hundreds of other times in my life. Had remarked on so many ways that I resembled my mother. But I hadn't expected Kyon to have noticed.

"I mean it, you know? Y-you do!" Kyon was frantic, and his eyes looked just as red as mine felt. "I can't believe I never noticed it before. It makes so much sense. I love Haruhi, but Mikuru, she... you... you've always been the most beautiful, lovely girl in the world to me. _Always_. I couldn't explain it even to myself. But now... I'm... I'm so proud of you."

I was thankful for Suou, who had the detachment to pull Kyon away from me and slam the door in my face. All I had the power for was to sit down and lean against the wall, cry as I slumped there. I hadn't realised what it would mean to me, even after all this time and healing, to come back and be the very agent of my own misery. I didn't feel guilt – I'd lived with guilt over Kyon's departure for enough years that I was perhaps spent in that respect – but I felt all the pain and loss that I _imagined_ Kyon might be feeling, like a burning brand inside my ribs. I ached. I cried. I shuddered and wrapped my arms around my knees. In less than an hour in my own chronology I would be back home and happy and safe with my family. But in that moment I was adrift and alone in the world. In that moment that everything pivoted around, I felt like dark matter. The eye of the storm. The middle of a spinning top. No matter what I did, no matter how many ragged gasps of breath I pulled into my lungs, I was still just me. Alone.


	18. Chapter 18

**July 7th, 2025, East Junior High, Tokyo**

The school never really changed that much. We sat on the bleachers, our knees feeling awkward and our legs a little too-long. It had been years since high school for most of us, and I'd grown a lot myself since I had been in junior high.

Uncle Itsuki was trying to make me eat something, but I couldn't. I really couldn't put anything in my mouth. My stomach was tight and full of acidic fear. What if the signs that Aunt Yuki and Uncle Itsuki had been monitoring and researching all week were false positives, or just natural variations? What if my own data was flawed?

I clasped my hands around my knees, my fingernails digging in. I didn't feel any pain. It was like I'd been running on pure nerves and anxiety and anticipation since that dinner with Mum. Tense and numb. Mum herself was striding back and forth across the bleachers behind us, calling out to Aunt Yuki about the construction of the symbols. Aunt Yuki knew them back to front by now, after all these years. But we were all scared. That was how Mum coped; she had a photograph, an old newspaper clipping, clutched tight in her hand. She was wearing shorts and a too-big T-shirt, and the hair that she'd grown out again the year before was tied back in a tidy ponytail. If something went wrong and she hadn't tried her utmost to make it work, I knew she'd only blame herself.

I sighed heavily and gritted my teeth. I took the bread roll from Uncle Itsuki and just held on to it. Didn't even open the plastic wrapping around it. He took another from the bag for himself, and he unwrapped his, but didn't eat it either. He tore it into small pieces in his fingers, arranging the crumbs in the shape of constellations and mystic glyphs. I suppose we all had our own ways of coping.

"I... never meant... I mean... I didn't..." Uncle Itsuki sounded very choked up. I was pretty sure he was talking about that incident where he'd tried to confess to Mum, and Kyon had punched him. We hadn't known at the time of course, but we'd all discovered one way or another that Mum and Kyon had been too committed to each other for something like Itsuki's own issues to be a problem. Uncle Itsuki knew it, usually. When he was in his right mind. But in the same way that Mum needed to contribute to the glyphs on the ground, Uncle Itsuki needed to feel this irrational guilt. I could tell from the way his fingers shook as they poked at the food on the wooden slats beside our feet; if he didn't feel this guilt, maybe Kyon won't come back... that's the sort of thing he was thinking. That maybe, somehow, it was his own feelings that had separated our family all those years ago.

"You know Kyon never cooked much, and he was terrible at empathising with people." I didn't expect my words to have any effect, and Uncle Itsuki gave no signs of having heard them. I shrugged and stared resolutely down at the movements Aunt Yuki was making as she methodically lay down the chalk.

"I mean," I said after the silence (aside from Mum's shouted directions) had stretched out for a few seconds, "that you couldn't possibly have taken Kyon's place. And you know from the research we did that it might have been all or nothing. Kyon for nine months, versus his eventual return and maybe even _my_ existence. You don't wish I'd died at birth, do you? Or that I was deleted from the universe?"

Uncle Itsuki shook his head slowly, and did not turn to look at me, refused to meet my eyes. "You know I don't. Of course I don't."

Summer went on around the school, cars and crickets chirping and somewhere someone drunk shouting something unintelligible. I took a quick glance at Mum, who was gesticulating wildly and making Yuki redo the last part – though of course it was picture perfect – and not paying any attention to Uncle Itsuki or myself.

"The only thing to really worry about is whether or not we've got the calculations right. It's been a lot of time, and errors may have been made in transcription. The star-charts may have been wrong. Suou and Yuki's shared coding language might have flaws – you said you only spent a day on it in that room? - or there could be a problem with the whole linkup system. Our whole plan is in beta."

Uncle Itsuki stared at me as if I was mad. "First, no way would Yuki or Suou ever make an error in calculation like that. Those two can do the work of a thousand years of programming in a minute, and they had a whole day to work on it. Second, don't be stupid, you know you got the star charts right. Finally, the linkup _will_ work. We only theoretically need one Esper, one time-traveller, one god, and we've got... two time-travellers, two Espers, and odds-on three gods."

He didn't say a thing about transcription errors. He didn't have to, really, and I shouldn't have mentioned it at all. Though they had taken accurate data back with them, there was no guarantee that the hints they'd left for us in the Tanabata story were all retained through the retellings and changes in Japanese language over the years. Maybe it was next year, or maybe we needed to be doing more than simply just being here, being ready to be one big noisy beacon that would be seen through time and space and special little bubbles of closed space. Maybe _we_ were the ones who were supposed to be breaking through? If the documents were wrong, then we were wrong, and no matter how accurate Yuki and Suou's calculations, no matter how well trained Fujiwara and I were at time-travel, no matter how far Itsuki and Tachibana could project their thoughts, we might never recover our lost family.

How surreal. I was training Sasaki during my working week, and here I was shivering with stress over the thought of losing her in the past forever. I was of course worried about Sasaki's colleagues, and my heart was breaking with fear for Kyon, but the oddness of Sasaki's own chronology was striking.

I swallowed, and shook my head resolutely. Suou would have planned for redundancies. That was why the story was so universal, so well distributed. She would have kept all the pertinent details simple, things that were unlikely to be changed very much over time. The core elements of the story. In the end, it really came down to the constellations, our geographical location, and the ways that our two groups shared connections.

"Yeah, we'll be fine." I didn't sound anywhere near convinced. I was trying to be brave and confident, but I bet I didn't pull it off at all. But it was now or never, and we were ready.

"All right, you two! Come on, MOVE IT!" Mum turned her megaphone on us, and there was a small screech of whining feedback around the edges of her voice.

Itsuki and I winced and shared a sympathetic smile. I stood, tucking my roll back into the backpack he'd carried through the chain-link fence, and hefted my own higher on my shoulder. We'd brought things. Candles, flares, glow-sticks, fireworks. You name it, we'd brought it. If it could make a noise or a light, it was somewhere lumped in with our stuff. Aunt Yuki was done with the first glyph, and when Mum nodded sharply in my direction I walked down to the ground. With careful meticulous attention I started with the glowsticks and began outlining the words. I set flashlights on small improvised tripods (disposable chopsticks and gaffer tape) in predetermined places so that the right light and shadows were cast across the words.

I followed Aunt Yuki across the sandy pitch, leaving light and shadow in my wake. I could hear Uncle Itsuki composing himself, taking a sip of water from a bottle and then coming down to join us. He checked on the lights, replaced the duds and started lighting the smaller candles that I'd left untouched.

Mum probably didn't notice her own power. She'd never been very self aware. But I think we all could feel it. That buzzing on the skin, short hairs raised all along the backs of our necks. Even the breath in our lungs tingled with it. It was curling and weaving, settling into the strange patterns on the ground.

I could also hear Aunt Yuki's muttering, I was close enough to her now. Like a Buddhist mantra, over and over again she repeated the same strings of data. Some of the sections resonated with my own programming, and I wondered at what had gone in to my own augmentations, but most of it was beyond me. I could travel through time, but I barely understood some of the science involved. This was more complex, and far beyond me. Somewhere in another time and place, Suou was doing this exact same thing. Two irreconcilable datastreams working in synchronisation. Aunt Yuki was only echoing what she'd picked up from her own scans, and we could only hope that she'd analysed her results properly.

Behind me, Uncle Itsuki began to feel larger. More potent. I did not doubt that his ESPer powers would be fully usable. The whole world felt a bit like twilight; like a closed space. Any second now, I half expected giants or monsters or demons to appear. Something big. Instead, though it felt intense, there was just us and the balmy summer night.

I had never been trained like Sasaki, and I was too meek; I couldn't wield the raw talent of my mother. But I felt full to the brim with potential and energy. I tried with my heart and my sticky sweating pores to push it out through my skin, to have it sink into the other things being done, charge them up or something. But I have no idea if it worked or not. I suppose it might have been wishful thinking, all in my head. But I think that as our work progressed the glow-sticks lasted longer and there were less false-starts and dead batteries to contend with in torches.

After we were done with what felt like a very rehearsed and important ritual, the rest of the evening was depressingly normal. We retreated to the bleachers again and sat amongst torn cellophane wrappers and backpacks. The sounds of the night – cars, people, trains, birds, trucks – didn't change. It was like any other Tanabata.

For a family that was very used to calming each other down, we were all highly strung. Aunt Yuki turned the pages of her book unnaturally quickly; she lost all pretence of humanity. I fidgeted, and Mum alternated between running her knuckles over the top of my hair and scowling at shadows in the treeline. Uncle Itsuki sulked and occasionally tried to force a smile onto his face.

We said nothing.

When the sound came, I barely noticed it. It had been hours, and I had been folding the paper bag we'd brought the matches in into small brown lumpy flowers (well _you_ try origami with thick waxed paper in the dark!) and I just must have assumed I'd dropped something through the gaps in the bleachers. By the time I'd realised that the sound hadn't come from us, but the pitch below, the scuffling had come again.

I didn't want to get our hopes up, but I looked across the words. I scanned intently, eyes peeled for the slightest hint of movement.

Beside me, Aunt Yuki closed her book and set it aside. She spoke with a tone that sounded relieved. "Finished."

"What?" Mum pulled her hand out of my hair, and scrambled to her feet as I winced and rubbed at the painful tug.

"What? Where, Yuki?"

Aunt Yuki pointed, and sure enough, there was a tall male figure standing there. It was so far away that we couldn't really make out his face, or the human-shaped shadows behind him that could be – must be – the others. I don't know how we got down there without any of us tripping over or stumbling, but we did. We were standing with the last of the candles slowly drowning in their own wax at our feet, squinting into the darkness as a very tired looking man made his way across the symbols towards us.

It was Mum that called out first. "Hey, John Smith, you're late, asshole!"

The voice that answered her was older than the Kyon I'd known, but he sounded fresh and full of joy. "I had some work to get done, Haruhi. Cut a guy some slack!"

I could hardly believe it. Mum could, though. She ran to meet him, and we trailed behind her.

"Kyon! It's really you? Really? Did you bring me back anything interesting?"

He snorted and then laughed. "I go missing for twenty years, and this is what I come back to? I'm glad you're still the same loving woman."

Mum swatted at his head, and then wrapped an arm around him as if he'd never been gone. As if this was just another day in the good old clubroom. "Oh, things have changed. You have no idea, really! I've been running a biological and social experiment in your absence."

My arm was being tugged. I stepped forwards, close enough to make out Kyon's face. He was older, and I'm not sure why but it shocked me. He was Mum's age, of course. An adult.

"This," Mum proclaimed proudly, "is the result of my machinations! Isn't it nice?"

Kyon ignored her, though he kept an arm wrapped tightly around her waist. He smiled at me. "So I'm guessing we don't call you 'Mikuru' anymore, right?"

"It's, um, K-kurumi."

It was hard to see his face in the low light, but I was pretty sure he'd rolled his eyes. "Kurumi. Well, we can hardly call you Haruhi's experiment alone. I am at least partly responsible."

Mum sounded scandalised when she spoke up. "What? And here I thought I'd have something to surprise you with! You had _better_ have brought me something good."

Kyon – not really Kyon, but my father I suppose now – shrugged and held up his free arm. He was holding a pair of very rustic and rough-looking handmade sandals.

"I'm pretty bad at this thing. I only got the one pair done in all that time. Sorry."

Things got confusing after that. Everyone was hugging everyone, even Aunt Yuki. The others had arrived, too, and I'd hardly noticed that at all. There were too many arms and our feet were turning the sticky summer dust of the sports field into sweaty crumbly muck as we shuffled around between each other. We were crying and laughing and then trying to hide our own tracks. To clean up, so we could go home. Dad sighed wearily as he packed exhausted glow-sticks into a backpack.

"You do realise that with the brightness of Tokyo, there's no way you could have seen this from space?"

Mum pouted and kicked Dad gently in the shins. He pretended to be hurt, but he couldn't keep the grin off his face. He just kept looking around at everyone, and smiling.

"Oh come on, you weren't in outer space," Mum retorted, "I know for a fact that you couldn't have found the wood to make those shoes up in the stars."

Dad shrugged, and just wrapped his arms around me. He rested his chin on my head, and shared a look with Mum that I couldn't see in the dark. "How," he asked with what sounded like a very tight throat, "did you and I make someone like her?"

Mum shrugged, and wrapped her arms around us both. Then there were two pointy sharp chins on my skull, and I felt a little too warm and crowded in with the summer night air. But it was good. I didn't feel like an adult, just a little girl. Everything felt whole and right in a way that it never had before.

It felt like home. Like I'd been living in the chaotic black space between two constellations, and something had finally bridged the gap.

_The End_

_Endnotes: Wow this was a long journey. When I came up with this idea, I really disliked Mikuru as she was presented in both the books and anime, and a lot of the problems I had with her were with the ways that she was sexually objectified and Kyon was reduced to an ogling slavering idiot at times. I started writing early drafts trying to find a way to like her partly as a personal writing challenge, and in the end I've really come to love her and care enough about this story to work it into readable chapters. I still find her annoying in canon sometimes, but I think it's more the situations she's placed in than anything else. I really hope that everyone's enjoyed reading this, and I want to say a big, huge, wonderful thank-you to everyone who's been following and commenting and reviewing. I'm not sure I deserve half the praise I get from you guys, but I'm glad you enjoyed this story._

_I may write further, some people have said they're curious about Sakaki, but I'm studying and working so if anything does come it may be some time. If you want to discuss anything, pm me! If you write something similar and I haven't commented, please let me know, because I'd love to read your stuff! If you're in Japan or know anybody there, I hope that everyone you love is safe, and I encourage people to consider donating to the relief funds if you have any cash to spare._


End file.
